Ebola, USAID, and the Health of the Commonwealth

First opportunity to publish at the Kentucky Lantern, an independent paywall free news organization based in Frankfort, and it’s about Ebola:

Part of the premise of USAID was the idea that bad things abroad will inevitably find their way here. The wages of dire poverty include violence, extremism, and terrorism, but also infectious diseases and organisms that travel along lines of trade and migration. The current outbreak is on pace to become one of the worst on record, in part because our early warning system is breaking down. In the past, the work of identifying and containing outbreaks of Ebola and other diseases has fallen to a coalition of local authorities and international medical personnel, the latter including many Americans sponsored by USAID.

In addition to general development work, USAID served as the backbone for a system of disease detection and surveillance in Africa and elsewhere. This system allowed epidemiologists and physicians to detect outbreaks, identify the likely avenues of travel, and establish firewalls to prevent disease from reaching the United States.

The destruction of USAID is the Crime of the Century, likely to have a far more destructive global impact than the decision to invade Iraq or the decision to bomb Iran. The effects are going to be felt here.