If we are to be guided by up-to-the-minute reports emanating from the principal international health organisation, the World Health Organisation (WHO) – the dreaded Ebola infectious disease is almost uncontrollable, threatening to assume pandemic proportions. 

Current figures as it relates to deaths from the principally affected states of Guinea where the outbreak started, Sierra Leone, and Liberia are 4,493 deaths, and 8,997 cases, either confirmed, suspected or probable.
Two other affected African states, Nigeria and Senegal, appears to have arrested the spread of the virus, as there have been no recent reported cases.
Although this deadly disease had been ravaging those named African states, the general conclusion was that it was an entirely African concern. However, as the numbers started to mount, the realisation of a much wider contagion with a high casualty rate began to dawn, prompting international involvement in the form of material assistance and personnel offered towards the African states for combating the deadly scourge.
The world’s reality, however, was finally jolted when the Duncan case broke in the United States, followed by his subsequent death; then on to Spain, and even in Brazil, where there has been a recorded death, and two individual cases of the infection being diagnosed.
As it is, mankind is definitely threatened by a deadly viral, the nature of which is proven clinically more deadly than the still uncured HIV/AIDS disease, for which there is medication that now enables its victims to enjoy longer, even normal lives.
But not the Ebola; for those exposed to infected persons – the disease manifests within twenty one days, with any chance of survival depending on specifically immediate diagnosis, once early symptoms appear. But even that is not a guarantee of survival since, according statistics, there is, so far, a mortality rate of almost 70% of infected persons.
Thus it comes as no surprise that the world is now, in literally panic mode, as countries begin to implement preventive measures to this deadly viral, entering their ports.
Guyana has already mounted a proactive programme that focuses primarily on the importance of screening and detection of potentially infected persons and isolation measures, with a latter facility identified within the precincts of the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation. Similar measures are also being effected within the wider CARICOM constellation, as is the case in most countries around the world.
But within the last few days, these initial steps have been extended to placing bans, for the time being, on visitors from the affected African states. St Lucia, Trinidad, Jamaica and Guyana, are the first CARICOM countries to resort to such extremes.
However diplomatically unfriendly such a measure may seem, it is most understandable given the fact that international travel is a certainty of taking the disease from its place of origin to other shores.
Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian, did bring the viral with him to the USA, when he arrived to visit relatives.
An early indication of this not surprising step occurred when a group of Guyanese parliamentarians decided against attending the 60th Commonwealth Parliamentary Association Conference in Yaounde, Cameroon although there is no known instance of the virus there at the moment.
Already, Israel has announced taking of body temperature measures for arrivals, with Nigeria also maintaining very strict screening at its airports, seaports and border areas.

The Unites States, seen as the lead country in efforts to combat the spread of this infectious disease, has also implemented elaborate mechanisms for screening arrivals at five major airports; but the Obama administration has so far not instituted a ban on visitors from the major affected countries.

Of course, there are the attendant quarantine facilities for suspected victims.
As alluded above, we can understand and appreciate restrictive entry measures, adopted by any CARICOM Member state, particularly the smaller island states.

A disease of the deadly Ebola type is a huge threat for even developed states with advanced economies and all the inherent technologies. But, such can only have cataclysmic consequences for the tiny Caribbean economies, as frankly reiterated by Prime Minister Kenny Anthony of St Lucia.
Holistically, the social and economic consequences of this threatening pandemic are too frightful to comprehend, should these initial steps found to be inadequate in halting its spread. This means that all states within the internationally community ought to work assiduously, even coordinating their strategies, especially at regional levels in the battle against this perilous monster. Time is certainly not on anyone’s side – Ebola has to be halted!