By Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, interim editor-in-chief

Reuters reported Thursday that there is no Ebola outbreak after all in the southern Sudan. Rather, the rumors were started by local administrators and representatives of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) “to draw attention . . . to the acute lack of medicine” in the area, according to Kuol Diem Kuol, an SPLA spokesperson.  According to Reuters, the false rumors that 20 soldiers and three of their wives had died were successful in bringing health personnel to the area to investigate . . . and to provide the desired medicines.

I can’t help thinking that conditions must be really really bad if the Sudanese people went to the lengths of staging a hoax to receive health care. After all, this is a people that has withstood some of the worst brutality in recent memory from civil wars and the genocide in the Darfur region. […]