A Canadian man returning from Liberia recently alarmed health officials with fears that he might have the Ebola virus. Although in good health when he traveled, the man was admitted to the intensive-care unit in Saskatchewan with classic symptoms of the disease.
That health scare, and others in recent weeks, were a wake-up call to those who saw the outbreaks as an "African problem." They remind us that people – and their infections – are not bound by borders. To those who claim we can’t afford foreign aid, I respond that we can’t afford to think of health threats as "foreign" and "domestic."