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Victims of the food crisis.
The threat of hunger is tracking Ebola across affected West African nations as the disease kills farmers and their families, drives workers from the fields and creates food shortages.
In the worst-hit states of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, Ebola is ravaging their food-producing 'breadbasket' regions, preventing planting and harvesting, and disrupting supply routes and markets.
"Hunger will kill us where Ebola failed," said Pa Sorie, a 61-year-old rice and cassava farmer in Port Loko in northern Sierra Leone. A father of six with four grandchildren, he says he has already lost three close relatives to Ebola.
The UN's World Food Programme and Food and Agriculture Organisation say
border and market closures, quarantines and movement restrictions, and widespread fear of Ebola have led to food scarcity, panic buying and price increases, especially in Sierra Leone and Liberia.
Since it was first reported in the forest region of Guinea in March, the hemorrhagic fever has killed 3,338 people. It crossed into Liberia and Sierra Leone and has triggered smaller outbreaks and cases in Nigeria, Senegal and even the United States, prompting the World Health Organization to declare an international public health emergency on Aug. 8.
As governments from the United States to China and Cuba
send troops and medics to the affected corner of Africa in an attempt to contain the epidemic, relief agencies are scrambling to ward off the humanitarian crisis threatening hundreds of thousands along with the health disaster.
"The country will starve," warned Mary Hawa John-Sao, vice president of Sierra Leone's National Farmers' Federation and an award-winning grower. Her own fields were lying unattended and spoiling in quarantined Kailahun district, which along with neighbouring Kenema in the east and Port Loko and Bombali in the north are the country's traditional food-growing areas.
John-Sao, 55, said 75 percent of those killed by Ebola in Kailahun and Kenema were farmers and hunger was "imminent."
Comment: Double Whammy, indeed! Logic says to quarantine an infected area to stop the spread of a deadly disease. But the devastating effects to farming caused by the disease require that some border issues be altered to allow for food dispensation. Restrictions and displacement have already affected prices because food producers are leaving their land to seek potentially safer areas. Introduce a military presence (US 4000 troops) to contain a starving populace, healthy or otherwise...recipe for a double disaster despite aid relief.
Let's see. Why else would countries, such as the U.S. send troops to "patrol" Ebola? Gold mines. Ebola is short-sheeting the mine labor. Last month, a group of 11 mining companies asked for international help against Ebola, citing travel bans as a cause for mining operations to close. And, according to sources, miners are the most vulnerable to the outbreak since many of the mines are in Ebola territory and miners work in closed quarters. In addition to gold mining, there are iron ore and aluminum producers and oil drillers (ExxonMobil for example) who will be forced to cease operations due to labor loss. Lower production means higher prices for these products. However, mining companies that cannot produce go bankrupt and will be forced to do what? Sell to those who have the resources to vulture off of disaster. Which particular vultures come to mind?
And, while we are at it...with a decimated farming industry, why not total GMO control when the epidemic subsides...just speculating here.