As Ebola has shown, the global health system is as strong as its weakest link

The west African Ebola outbreak started in a small village in Guinea. It shows the value of investing in grassroots healthcare

In the city of Beni, in the north-east corner of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, an outbreak of Ebola is simmering. Fear of this lethal disease and all that goes with it – grief over lost loved ones, exhausted emergency response workers and ongoing insecurity – might once have felt distant, foreign, unknowable. But, tragically, these emotions are all too familiar.

Almost five years ago, a two-year-old boy from Meliandou – a tiny rural village in southern Guinea, bordering Liberia and Sierra Leone – fell sick with a strange illness. His symptoms were the stuff of nightmares: internal bleeding, black stools, vomiting and a high fever. Just two days later, he died.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2O4IMyk
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