Fill them with food, to stop ebola.

Till today nearly 3,500 people have perished in the ebola epidemic in West Africa. The epidemic started in Guinea and spread to the neighboring states of of Sierra Leone and Liberia before spreading to Nigeria, skipping Ivory Coast, Togo and Benin on the way. Clearly these countries manged to limit contact with patients by restricting travel. Now scientists are predicting a 75% chance of spreading to France and a 50% chance of spreading to Britain by the end of October. But it seems that the magic number is 70%. If 70% of people can be isolated in their homes then the disease will immediately start to die down. Sierra Leone has tried already by forcing a 3 day lockdown in September to prevent people from moving around. This was not enough. The lockdown has to be for a much longer period, which is impossible because people will die of starvation. This is where the international community can come in. It is far too expensive to send medical equipment, doctors and nurses, to treat patients, and health workers to disinfect entire communities. Since such an exercise is entirely dependent on volunteers it will never be logistically possible. Besides these people could themselves become infected and take it back to their home countries. A nurse in Spain, who cared for 2 Spanish men, who contracted the disease in Africa, has been confirmed with the disease. A much cheaper and easier alternative is to inundate these 3 countries with free food. The populations of these countries are tiny - 10.6 million in Guinea, 4 million in Liberia and 6.2 million in Sierra Leone, a total of around 20 million people, less than the population of Shanghai. The world food prices are at 4 year lows so it should be possible to dump large amounts of food in all these countries so that people do not need to go to markets, traders do not need to go to other towns and farmers do not need to till their lands. No doubt this will paralyse agriculture of these countries so farmers will need to be helped with seeds and fertilisers once the epidemic is over. Sadly, for Obama the epidemic is a security threat to the US and he is sending 4,000 troops to west Africa to help. We are profoundly grateful that he is not sending drones to disinfect these countries with Hellfire missiles loaded with white phosphorus, or napalm as one American politician has jokingly suggested. These 4,000 soldiers should be used only for delivering food from village to village so that every household has enough to eat, and more. That way the soldiers will not come in contact with sick people and the people will have no need to go elsewhere, which will act as an effective quarantine. Without using force. Simple and kind.