Ebola, Global Health and the Role of Technology

That I survived meningitis under circumstances marked by limited technology and health services is certainly instructive for us today as we battle Ebola. Fortunately the fight against this deadly infection need not be with low level technology. The high level technology we need is available and, hopefully, the people to deploy them are reading this right now. What exactly do we need to do? To be clear, tackling any disease outbreak requires a good understanding of the disease as well as the environmental, cultural and political factors that influence the occurrence, distribution and spread of that disease. And so to beat this Ebola outbreak and to prevent a recurrence of similar outbreaks there is need to tackle the disease along with its determinants. The good news is that there are potential technological solutions for every aspect of this Ebola outbreak.