Ruth Alexander
speaker
4,250 appearances
120 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2011
last heard Aug 2018
Ruth Alexander’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Hello and welcome to More or Less on the BBC World Service.
I'm Ruth Alexander and if you've been listening to the news lately, you could be forgiven for feeling worried.
The outbreak of the lethal Ebola virus has spread in West Africa affecting Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria.
As we heard there, this is the deadliest outbreak of the disease to date killing almost a thousand people so far.
And as a deadly virus with graphic effects it seems the stuff of those dramatic Hollywood films about deadly viral pandemics.
But before we panic, let's think.
because more or less listener Max Cousins has been in touch with a question.
Yes, we've heard this statistic over and over again in news reports, but what does it actually signify?
Well, more or less as James Fletcher has been finding out, and he's here to tell us.
Maimouna Majumda there said the current fatality rate is 54%.
And as Max, our listener, was wondering, are all the countries with Ebola cases seeing that kind of rate?
Those are big differences though.
But that brings us to another question, doesn't it?
What are the chances of getting it in the first place?
And talking about the risk of transmission, there's been a lot of concern about the Ebola virus spreading outside of West Africa, hasn't there?
I mean, to the US or the UK, for instance.
Airlines such as Emirates and British Airways have stopped or reduced flights into the region.
And more controversially, American billionaire Donald Trump has been tweeting that infected medical staff shouldn't be allowed to return to the US...
and that, as he says, the US must immediately stop all flights from Ebola-infected countries or the plague will start and spread inside our borders.
I mean, we're back in the territory of thrillers here, aren't we?
Showing 1421–1440 of 4,250 · page 72 of 213
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