USA TODAY: America must recognize and fight the real emergency of Ebola before it’s too late
Vanessa Kerry, physician and founder of Seed Global Health, and John Kerry, former U.S. Secretary of State

“Much has been written about a politically contrived ’emergency declaration’ at our southern border, but too little is being reported about a potent, critical emergency that respects no borders — an undeclared emergency demanding urgent attention: the killer infectious disease Ebola. … The trajectory is eerily reminiscent of the early months of the 2014 crisis. We can stop it. But we won’t succeed if we don’t demand American leadership from start to finish. … The right thing to do is also the smart thing to do. Investments in health are proven to promote better governance, decrease corruption, and improve performance on the human development index. … We’re staring at a global tinderbox, and pandemic diseases are a deadly match strike away from conflagration. We pay now or we pay later — we pay for prevention, or we pay to mitigate the aftermath. It’s not too late to stop Ebola, but we can’t end a crisis we’re unwilling to acknowledge. Global pandemics are the real ‘caravans’ threatening to defy borders and destroy lives. They can’t be stopped with angry tweets, only with American leadership” (2/26).