The number of known Ebola cases in the US dropped to one on Tuesday when the second nurse to contract the disease was deemed cured. But Ebola cases are still skyrocketing in West Africa, new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows.
Ebola is still devastating West Africa, in one chart
To deal with the growing epidemic, the World Health Organization projects that West Africa needs 5,000 health-care workers. But, as Vox’s Sarah Kliff wrote, recent restrictions on health-care workers returning from West Africa to the US could actually discourage doctors and nurses from volunteering in the region.
“If you make people lose 21 days of contact, with their family, with their work and with their pay, that’s a huge barrier and discouragement for people to go abroad in the first place,” Michael Klag, dean of Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, told Kliff.
That could have detrimental effects in the US, too. If Ebola cases continue to climb in West Africa, the chances of the disease spreading to other parts of the world increase as well.
To learn more about Ebola, read Vox’s card stack and 21 maps and charts that explain Ebola.
