Article about what has happened in the village Thomas Duncan came from. Heartbreaking for me.

I saw this report a couple of days ago and it has haunted me and made me angry at the fear mongers on cable news. The US has it's first Ebola patient and had a few mistakes but we are so far ahead of what is happening in West Africa, we seem whiny.

This is a report on the village the Thomas Duncan live in and their report of what has happened there

In the neighborhood where Williams lived, some people were no longer willing to take any risks Thursday, not after seeing what happened to those who showed compassion for the pregnant woman.

As 9-year-old Mercy Kennedy sobbed along with neighbors mourning news of her mother's death, not a person would touch the little girl to comfort her.

Mercy's mother had helped to wash the pregnant woman's clothes, and had touched her body after she died at home when no hospital could find space for her, neighbors said.

With Mercy's mother dead, neighbors fear it is only a matter of time before she, too, shows signs of the virus, and they want to know which other children may have come into contact with her while she was fetching water.

Pewu Wolobah, a member of the neighborhood anti-Ebola task force, lamented that even as Americans try to trace all of Duncan's contacts there, the virus is spreading through Duncan's old neighborhood faster than anyone can keep track.

The aunt of the pregnant victim died on Wednesday after collapsing in her house next door to the Williams home. Her 15-year-old daughter Angela is left behind, along with the pregnant woman's three younger siblings - Ezo Williams, 16, Tete Williams, 12, and Stanley Williams, 3 - and the family dog.

Their parents left Thursday morning for an Ebola treatment center. As word spread that they, too, took a taxi, the health workers expressed alarm

cbs news

Sometimes I think we have lost our humanity. We focus on ourselves and make huge deals out of mistakes. Mistakes from a country just learning to deal with it. We are light years ahead of West Africa. Then the news and some on ATS go on to fear monger just to get ratings or attention.

This is what Liberia and others are dealing with. Not religious but 'There for the grace of God go I'. Any of us could have been there.

I wonder if, in part, the fear mongering comes from knowledge that, at the moment, we have no way of stopping it either here, in Africa, or anywhere else.

The normal first step would be a complete quarantine, but we don't seem to want to do that, or can't figure out how to. Big Pharma, which just about everybody on ATS hates with a passion, must be pulling 'round the clock shifts to find a treatment.

Africa has very few medical assets to use against the disease, and when it gets into the larger cities disaster will be multiplied. Lagos, Nigeria, has at least eight million people, and if Ebola gets there fairly soon I would expect hundreds of thousands to die, either by the disease or by panic.

I don't know what to do about it, and I'm not sure anyone else does, except to try to find a cure as quickly as can possibly be done.

a reply to: charles1952
As I understand Nigeria had one patient and identified 19 contacts. Don't know if others died but it was recently declared that they had contained it.

The current concern is Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinna [sp). While imperfect, we have so many more resources.

a reply to: liveandlearn

Thank you for the information, appreciate it. Since Liberia is the easiest for me to spell, I looked up their largest city and found Monrovia with over 900,000. A smaller disaster, but not a good vacation spot right now.

You're absolutely right that we have more resources, but what can we send that will solve the problem? Equipment may help in diagnosing the illness, and then what? We don't have a vaccine, and the things that look promising are in very short supply, not enough to do the job.

Doctors and people? You can ask for volunteers, but they know the chances are stacked against them. Time seems to be a real problem, and I don't know what can be done quickly enough, unless mass production of the vaccine is right around the corner.

a reply to: charles1952

We have already sent a Military unit. Most people don't realize that the Military has a Quarter Master Corp, that is responsible for building structures, bridges and roads. This is likely the unit they sent..

Consider that the young woman was sent away because of a lack of accommodation. So we are building the accommodation and sending supplies.

a reply to: liveandlearn

They need to send in the doggie docs. They are trained in zoological diseases. They sent them in to contain the Reston strain when it broke out in DC,