Disease is prone to happen throughout the world, but how people handle such matters is debatable. Recently, an outbreak of a deadly disease in Africa has caused panic across the world.

This year, Ebola became a serious issue and has brought an American missionary worker back to the United States along with a hospital aid to be treated, alongside countless patients dead in Africa. Better choices should have been made prior to the outbreak, and even during the outbreak, to limit the number of deaths and ones to yet come.

It all begins with the disease’s origin. This lethal illness could have easily been prevented and therefore spared countless people from contracting the disease. This disease specifically originated from a remote village near a neighboring rainforest. A boy contracted Ebola and spread the disease throughout his village. The disease begun with being transferred to a human from an animal, but from there was spread due to human contact.

And if conditions were better in Africa, this disease may not have occurred.

In Africa, it is custom for animals to run wild throughout villages, and for the villagers to consume the animals. If the contact between humans and animals were limited, there is a chance this disease would not be in the headlines. Other poor living conditions enabled for vast amounts of others to then contract the disease.

Over forty percent of people living in sub-Saharan Africa live in absolute poverty according to OurAfrica.org. On top of this, sanitation coverage is lowest in Sub-Saharan Africa, where seventy percent of people do not have access to improved sanitation.
With these proven facts, it is easily understood that the disease had an ideal environment to progress. In addition to the inability to not have access to sufficient sanitation, there is no access to clean water.

This disease is easily spread from the repetitive use of unclean water. If an infected person took a shower, since they do not practice good hygiene, the next person to shower would use the same water and contract the disease.

This contradicts the countless organizations gearing to improving hygiene if Africa. Of course serving a good purpose, these organizations have done a surplus amount of good deeds and have improved countless lives. However, the spread of this disease in a short amount of time suggests that even more time and effort needs to be spent ensuring the awareness of hygiene and access to clean water and better living conditions.The Register believes that with access to clean water and better hygiene altogether, this disease would not have spread nearly as fast or as greatly as it in fact did.

Another negative aspect and how the Ebola disease was handled was when it was brought into the United States. As mentioned before, two American citizens were brought to Atlanta, Georgia after contracted the Ebola disease in Africa. For a while, there was even talk of the disease being brought to the medical center in Omaha, Nebraska.

Bringing this disease to the United States was a bad decision. Even though the patients were Americans, if others got contaminated, not only would the disease be in Africa, but also the United States. In addition, if the disease had spread in Atlanta, it would have been transmitted across the world because Atlanta is home to the largest airport in the world.

Even though this disease was well contained, it still ran a high risk. For future patients that they plan to bring in, another safer option would to take the patients to a more isolated area.

All in all, the origin and handling of the disease was not as good as it could have been. For reference, people should take the Ebola outbreak as a learning opportunity and learn from the mistakes made throughout the incident so that this does not occur again.