Ebola outbreak this may help!

The present outbreak of Ebola in West Africa is making news headlines across the globe. The fear of this virus spreading globally has been heightened by Eric Duncan who travelled from Liberia to Dallas Texas to reunite with his girlfriend. Apparently he showed no symptoms of the disease and was not sick when he boarded the plane for the United States of America. But when he arrived the U.S. he fell sick and eventually died. His was the first case of the Ebola virus diagnosed in the U.S. and also the first death recorded as well. Another Liberian boarded a plane to Nigeria and introduced the first Ebola case in Nigeria and the first death there as well. Globalization is here to stay and journeys that used to take months take a few hours now. We are getting more and more connected than ever before. Something like this recent Ebola outbreak is raising fear and concern across the globe. This fear can be overcome since one of the greatest antidotes of fear is information. That is why we who are living in a global world have to make an effort to start understanding where other people are coming from. You may already know all this facts about Africa. If you do, please pass it to others and help clam their fears. 1) Africa is a continent not a single country. It has 54 sovereign countries and the youngest of them is South Sudan which was established in 2011. In fact Africa is 11.63 million sq. miles and the United States of America in 3.794 million Sq. miles. This implies that the African continent is 3 times bigger than the entire Unites States of America. And the Ebola virus is not rapidly spreading across these waste land as some may assume.

2) African is inhabited by more than 1.1 billion people and the population is projected to be over 2 billion by 2050. A tiny fraction of this population has been exposed to the Ebola virus.

3) The current Ebola outbreak has affected a few countries about 7%. This leaves 93 % of the continent Ebola free. Therefore the entire African continent has not been ravished by the Ebola virus as some fear.