[LINK] "The Long Tail of Ebola: Depressing African Economic Progress"

[rfmcdonald]

Wired's Maryn McKenna reports on the lasting economic consequences of the West African Ebola epidemic.

It has almost completely vanished from the news in the United States, but Ebola persists in three countries in Africa: Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone. The World Health Organization’s update today puts the case toll at 21,171 in those three countries, with 8,371 deaths. (Eight thousand deaths. Think about that, for a minute.)

But the uncomfortable reality is that the impact of Ebola reaches far beyond those individual cases. In reports issued today and in December — which I missed at the time, so am bumping it back up for reading now — the World Bank predicts that the disease will cripple the economies of these countries into the future.

Some examples from the current reports, on Liberia and Sierra Leone:
■Half of the heads of households in Liberia are out of work.
■60 percent of women and 40 percent of men in Liberia are unemployed.
■80 percent of families growing food had smaller harvests in the past growing season than the year before, because they were unable to find workers to help with the harvest.
■Two-thirds of Liberian households were not able to buy enough food.
■In Sierra Leone, 179,000 people have lost their jobs due to Ebola’s effects.