Most health industry professionals agree that too much panic has been spread about Ebola, and not enough useful information. In a nutshell: you’re in danger of getting Ebola only if you come into contact with the bodily fluids of someone with the disease.
Now that we’ve cleared that up, here’s another interesting fact about Ebola: it kills mostly women. BuzzFeed recently reported that “75% of Ebola deaths are women. That’s because they are the nation’s caregivers.”
This shouldn’t come as a surprise, with women traditionally the more nurturing of the sexes- still, 75% is such a large number. What the article surmises- and which makes more sense- is that women often ignore the risks and pay less attention to their symptoms than men.
Women’s issues are at the forefront of the news these days; from a backlash against feminism to the misogyny of Gamer Gate, more and more people around the globe are becoming aware of the problem of the substandard treatment of women. In Asia, tensions are rising between the governments of South Korea, Japan, and China- three of the most powerful countries in the world- over the subject of the wartime comfort women. It’s become a frustrating he-said she-said argument, with South Korea and China insisting that Japan’s landmark apology of 1993 and the efforts of their Asian Women’s Fund Foundation isn’t “enough”.
It is clear, however, that merely politicizing these issues isn’t solving the problem; women’s issues are best fought by the women themselves- a case of the world’s caregivers needing to care for themselves more.
