Five overlooked reasons behind West Africa’s Ebola outbreak

With a death toll that has now soared over 1000, the ongoing Ebola outbreak in the impoverished region of West Africa has reached an unprecedented scale due to a perfect storm of oft-overlooked factors.

In light of that fact, listed below are the five most fundamental, yet unheeded catalysts of the current health crisis in Africa.

SEE ALSO: Spanish priest infected with Ebola dies

1. Deforestation

As Peter Moskowitz of Al Jazeera America explains, “Researchers say this outbreak most likely started with humans being infected with Ebola after eating bats and possibly gorillas. Fruit bats are commonly eaten in stews in West Africa. Some bat populations have reservoirs of Ebola that when transmitted bat to bat do no harm. But the disease presents its deadly symptoms known as Ebola hemorrhagic fever when it’s passed to humans. Human contact with bats is now more likely than ever, thanks to expanding development and deforestation in West Africa.”

2. Climate change

Recent studies indicate that sudden shifts from dry to wet conditions—which are becoming increasingly common due to climate change— can lead to outbreaks of contagious diseases such as Ebola.

Per Angela Fritz and Jason Samenow of The Washington Post, “As the globe warms, precipitation extremes are projected to increase. Periods of drought are expected to become more frequent in some areas while heavy rain events, when they occur, are forecast to become more intense. Presumably, those areas which see precipitation variability increases – with abrupt shifts from extremely dry to extremely wet periods – would be most vulnerable to Ebola outbreaks.”

3. Urbanization

John Campbell of the Council on Foreign Relations emphasizes the effects of urbanization in Africa by stating that, “You have people of a village culture packing themselves into urban slums,” which inevitably leads to higher risks of outbreaks.

4. Governmental inadequacy

Michael T. Osterholm of The Washintgon Post explains, “For the past two months, the nongovernmental organizations providing the primary response to the Ebola outbreak have realized that the response from regional governments and international public agencies was inadequate. Their call for additional resources, including personnel and supplies, went unaddressed. Now, ending this outbreak will require a much more extensive public health response than has been needed in the past.”

5. Local fear & distrust of foreign physicians

Reporting for the New York Times, Adam Nossiter states that, “Workers and officials, blamed by panicked populations for spreading the virus, have been threatened with knives, stones and machetes, their vehicles sometimes surrounded by hostile mobs. Log barriers across narrow dirt roads block medical teams from reaching villages where the virus is suspected. Sick and dead villagers, cut off from help, are infecting others.”

SEE ALSO: Researchers have identified Ebola’s Patient Zero

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