Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, who raises an excellent question.
Responding to such an epidemic means stopping the spread of Ebola in the affected regions in order to prevent a pandemic.
If we are to learn anything, as the member said, going from what is simply a regional context to stop it from being a global phenomenon, which essentially we have now as we are hearing of cases, we have to be very careful not to spread fear but we have to monitor things carefully. It will spread throughout not just West Africa but beyond. Once it takes hold in any particular region, it does disable not only the health resources to an extent where basic infrastructure cannot be maintained as we have seen, but it also undermines the economy. That is something we had a little taste of with SARS.
I am very concerned that the world and the global community have not responded quickly enough. If I may, it is interesting when we see health issues like this. We certainly saw it with HIV/AIDS, where, let us be frank about this, we were self-satisfied that things were not affecting us as much. When it came to sub-Saharan Africa, the world did not do a lot until it absolutely ravaged major populations and then we started to care. That is a lesson that should be learned and we cannot repeat what happened with HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. That is why this should be taken so seriously, with all hands on deck doing everything we can.