Similarities Between War And Disease

War and disease have almost always been seen as parallel to one another. For instance, in the Judeo-Christian Bible disease and war are two of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Furthermore, French philosopher, Voltaire claimed that they were the “ingredients to a wretched world.” Now in the 21st century, Emmanuel Urey, a student, in response to the Ebola outbreak has added to this metaphor by stating that “[Liberia] just finished fighting a war, and now we have another one.” In other words, he is agreeing that disease and war are one in the same. While war and disease have hidden similarities on an infected society such as the deconstruction of social order it also builds and puts legal and medical institutions front and center in response …show more content…
The first, he says, is that disease spreads “quickly and efficiently” from infected person to nearby healthy people. Secondly, acute illness causes for those infected to either die or recover (memory) which results in the third characteristic where those who do recover, create antibodies (the building of legal and medical institutions) and are left immune to the disease. Lastly, disease tends to be restricted to humans. Although all four characteristics can be framed as analogous to war I focus on the second and third characteristics to highlight parallels between war and disease and how society may recover after it has been attacked by disease, war, or even …show more content…
Before the Ebola outbreak in Liberian society, Liberia had no public health infrastructure or any role in the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare and lacked medical doctors and trained professionals. Most of their health organizations come from foreign aid, such as the Médecins Sans Frontiéres who had malaria projects in Liberia during the first outbreaks of Ebola in late 2013. With the global concern of Ebola spreading beyond West Africa the World Health Organization began to send more aid to Liberia. Additionally, the United States aided $76.3 million to Liberia and 3,000 personnel to build and staff portable hospitals. Together with the aid of the Center of Disease Control, the World Health Organization, and the United States in October 2014, the cases of Ebola in Liberia began to decline and by May 2015, it was declared Ebola-free. Although the memory of civil war had caused them to focus on creating the antibodies and focusing on reconciling the nation with the military, they were blindsided by disease. Luckily, now they know that “investment n public health infrastructure is as important as trying to prevent civil