Government

COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS  BY John Campbell
(Scroll down for Laurie Garett's essay "Ebola's Lessons.")

With a rapidly growing and urbanizing population, persistent poverty, and weak governance, Sub-Saharan Africa is likely to be the source of new epidemics that potentially could spread around the world. Understanding the disastrous response of African governments, international institutions, and donor governments to the Ebola epidemic is essential if history is not to be repeated yet again. That makes Laurie Garrett’s essay, “Ebola’s Lessons,” in the September/October 2015 issue of Foreign Affairs, essential reading.

The Ebola virus treatment center where four people are currently being treated is seen in Paynesville, Liberia, July 16, 2015. (Courtesy Reuters/James Giahyue)

UNICEF PRESS OFFICE                                                 July 31, 2015

MONROVIA, Liberia -- UNICEF is supporting a drive by the Liberian Government to register more than 70,000 children whose births were not recorded during the Ebola crisis, leaving them vulnerable to marginalization and exclusion.

Birth registrations in 2014 and 2015 dropped sharply from pre-Ebola levels, according to Ministry of Health data. In 2013, before the onset of the virus, the births of 79,000 children were registered. In 2014, when many health facilities had closed or had reduced services due to the Ebola response, the number of registrations fell to 48,000 – a 39 per cent decrease over the previous year.

Just 700 children are reported to have had their births registered between January and May 2015. 

                                                                               © UNICEF/UNI190366/Grile Three month old Success Sumois,     strapped to her mother’s back, waits to be registered through the mobile birth registration team at the Totota Clinic in Liberia.

ALLAFRICA  by Mae Azango                                                                   June 10, 2015

Children in Gorlu, Salayea District Lofa County, are only in school two hours a day, or not in school at all. The reason? Their teachers are either running behind their salaries, or volunteer teachers are trying to get their names on the government's payroll.

Matthew Gahndolo, the school's principal laments, "The government of Liberia says, free and compulsory primary education, but what is the use when the children come to school by 8:00 a.m. and leave the class room after 10:00 a.m. to go on the farms, because their teachers are running behind salaries"

The situation of teachers leaving the classrooms and running behind salaries, and lack of qualified teachers to teach the children in rural Liberia, is not only restricted to Lofa County, but nearly all of the fifteen counties in Liberia. With the situation becoming increasingly alarming and dreadful, the government has also witnessed aggrieved health workers also on the streets demanding the Ebola risk benefits as well.

Read complete story.
http://allafrica.com/stories/201506100717.html

Commentary on U.S. legal and policy issues raised by the Ebola outbreak

WASHINGTON LAWYER by Sarah Kellog       April, 2015 edition

...Despite knowing that Ebola would likely find its way here (to the U.S.), the public health system was ill-prepared to fight the disease. It was caught napping, unable to swiftly formulate an effective national plan to contain the virus, address the concerns of medical professionals, and calm the public’s mushrooming fears....

The same lack of preparation seemed evident in how government authorities responded and applied public health statutes and regulations, especially at the state and local levels. Legal experts say U.S. public health law is robust enough to address any disease crisis, even one as deadly as Ebola, but the people who administer the law showed a profound ignorance about disease prevention and mitigation, as well as of basic civil rights, in dealing with the Ebola threat.

“Legally, we’re in excellent shape,” says James Hodge, a professor of public health law and ethics at Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law and a national expert on infectious diseases and the law. “Politically, we’re severely challenged.”

Read complete article.