Saturday, October 18, 2014

Could India Suffer an Ebola Pandemic?

It's something worth worrying about:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/18/opinion/indias-public-health-crisis.html?_r=0

http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/health/policy-and-issues/ebola-risk-high-for-india-says-harvard-medical-school-expert/article6513159.ece

3 comments:

Sujeev said...

That is the wrong question, I think. Since nobody in India is doing anything about it, the questions to ask should be - Will an Ebola epidemic be a curse? Or will it be a blessing in disguise?

san said...

Given India's population density, it could be apocalyptic.

Sujeev said...

Studying the panic in the US, and in other western countries, it would seem so, San.

But the evidence in India's case doesn't seem to bear out your fear.

In the British era, cholera & typhoid epidemics killed off many Indians, but that didn't stop India from being the second most populous country in the world since..... forever.

New diseases like Dengue,Chikunguniya,unexplained & mysterious viral fevers, have set up shop in India in the last couple of decades, BUT STILL THE POPULATION GROWS & GROWS!

My own (very uneducated) guess is that Ebola might trim India's population a bit, but will leave its long term growth trajectory unscathed,and will not alter India's status as the world's second most populous nation.