Ebola expert to speak at Coe College

Ebola may not dominate the headlines like it did over the summer, but that doesn't mean the disease isn't still a concern.

'It isn't over until it's over,” said Laurie Garrett, a Pulitzer Prize-winning authority on Ebola, global health, and disease prevention.

Garrett will speak at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at Coe College's Contemporary Issues Forum in its Sinclair Auditorium.

The number of new Ebola cases is plummeting. The World Health Organization said Thursday there were 99 new cases in the three most affected countries, the slowest weekly pace since June. But Garrett, a senior fellow for Global Health at the Council on Foreign Relations, warned there are still a number of isolated cases widely dispersed across Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.

'It's still lurking, and complacency can kill,” she said.

Garrett, a former science reporter for NPR and Newsday, covered the 1995 Ebola outbreak in Kikwit, Zaire. She also contributes to publications like Foreign Affairs, Esquire, Vanity Fair, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and Current Issues in Public Health.

There are also many lessons Garrett believes that the United States and the world should learn from the most recent efforts to contain Ebola. Nations have decided that non-communicable disease, such as cancer or heart disease, as a whole are more important than infectious diseases, she said. They have therefore cut the WHO's budget to its 'bare bones.”

'In an outbreak, WHO is a beggar,” she said, explaining the organization has to ask countries for things like scientists and airline tickets.

'This has to change,” she said, noting that 'we need a structure in place” to respond to health threats. Nations must also have medical personnel that are easily deployable, she said.

'We've learned and unlearned over the past six decades that germs never really go away,” she said.

Past guests of Coe's Contemporary Issues Forum have included President George H.W. Bush, former Poland President Lech Walesa, deep-sea oceanographer Robert Ballard, civil rights activist Myrlie Evers-Williams, and 'Doonesbury” cartoonist Garry Trudeau.

Event details:

Date: Feb. 3

Time: 7:30 p.m.

Location: Sinclair Auditorium, Coe College

Ticket price: $10