Rebirth of England

Chapter 989 Ebola and Refugees

On March 3, Guinea's Ministry of Health announced that the Ebola outbreak had infected 22 people, 80 of whom died.

In fact, the Ebola virus epidemic that first broke out in Guinea in February this year will later spread to eight countries including Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Senegal, the United States, Spain and Mali, and for the first time will spread beyond remote jungle villages to densely populated cities.

Ebola virus is a highly contagious virus that can cause Ebola hemorrhagic fever in humans and primates. It was first discovered in the Ebola River region in southern Sudan and Zaire (the old name of the Democratic Republic of the Congo) in 1976. Due to its extremely high mortality rate, it is listed by the World Health Organization as one of the most serious viruses that harm humans.

The Ebola virus genus includes five different species: Bundibugyo, Zaire, Reston, Sudan, and TaForest (Côte d'Ivoire).

The Bundibugyo, Zaire and Sudan types are associated with large-scale Ebola virus disease outbreaks in Africa over the years, while the Reston and Tai Forest types do not pose a serious threat to humans.

Among them, the Zaire type is the most pathogenic and lethal, with a mortality rate of nearly 90%. On March 3, the Pasteur Institute in Lyon, France confirmed that the Ebola virus that appeared in Guinea this time was the Zaire type Ebola virus.

Colo itself is located in West Africa and was not involved in the Ebola virus outbreak in the original time and space. However, because the flow of people between Colo and neighboring countries has greatly increased, we cannot take it lightly.

Just in early March, when the Ebola epidemic in Guinea began to become serious, Kolo Airlines announced the suspension of flights to Guinea. The Kolo government also stated that it would strengthen control and inspection of entry and exit, and also reminded citizens to avoid traveling to countries where Ebola epidemics have broken out.

After all, it can be seen from the picture that the area where the epidemic broke out is not far from Colo. Two years after the Ebola epidemic in the original time and space, it caused more than 320 billion US dollars in losses to the entire West Africa and caused local food shortages.

Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone had just begun to recover from military and political crises when they were hit by the Ebola epidemic. Agricultural production in each country was severely damaged, business almost stagnated, and people's lives became even more difficult.

In response, the West African Free Trade Organization held an emergency meeting on preventing the spread of the Ebola epidemic to the region, and announced that it would jointly provide $100 million in aid to three international organizations including the World Health Organization to deal with the Ebola hemorrhagic fever epidemic spreading in West Africa. (In August of that year, Japan's first aid amount was only $8 million)

At the same time, the Devonshire Charitable Foundation also announced a donation of US$500 million to relevant international organizations to respond to the Ebola outbreak in Guinea, and began recruiting volunteers including doctors and nurses in the UK to go to Guinea to participate in treatment work.

However, although the Ebola outbreak in West Africa does not seem to be serious now, as its scope expands, it will also have a certain impact on the deportation of illegal immigrants in the UK.

After all, most of the illegal immigrants heading to Europe come from the turbulent Middle East, from Iraq and Afghanistan at first, to Libya later, and Syria recently...

It can be said that the increasingly severe refugee crisis has made Europe exhausted in coping with it.

It is almost impossible for the EU to send these refugees back to the Middle East, so a few years ago, Britain and France cooperated in the "repatriation of illegal immigrants" and set up two illegal immigrant resettlement sites near Kolo at the border with Benin and Ghana.

Currently, the illegal immigrant resettlement sites in Benin are mainly used to accommodate refugees transported from France; the illegal immigrant resettlement sites in Ghana are mainly used to accommodate refugees transported from Britain.

Of course, Benin, Ghana and Kosovo can also obtain considerable "refugee resettlement funds" from Britain and France.

But when the Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa began to intensify, those illegal immigrants became increasingly resistant to going to these "illegal immigrant resettlement sites."

"We are urging the EU to coordinate with Türkiye on the refugee issue..."

Cameron was also quite troubled by this. He complained to Barron:

"The Turks are opening the door to an influx of refugees as a bargaining chip to extract benefits from the EU. Their asking price is very high and there is no way to reach an agreement in the short term."

As can be seen from the map, generally speaking, there are two main routes for smuggling from the Middle East to Europe.

That is to reach Europe by boat across the Mediterranean - Greece and Italy are usually the main landing points.

Another way is by land. As we all know, Türkiye's geographical location is very important. It spans Europe and Asia, and Türkiye borders Syria.

Before this, during the Syrian civil war, Turkey made a bold move in order to gain more benefits from the EU. That was to open the border between Turkey and Syria and allow Syrian refugees to enter Turkey.

Then countless "snakeheads" in Turkey began to help Syrian refugees enter Europe by land and sea, which brought an increasingly large refugee wave to Europe...

Don’t think that Britain will not be affected much because it is farther away from Turkey. Although Bulgaria, Greece and other Eastern and Southern European countries are closer to Turkey, the refugees are not stupid. They know that the welfare policies of those countries are better, and they are definitely Western European countries. Therefore, there are still a large number of refugees bypassing the Mediterranean and heading to Britain and France...

"Excuse me, Mr. Prime Minister. Immigrants can certainly bring fresh labor to Britain, but we also need to pay attention to the fact that refugees from the Middle East, in particular, are not well educated and have religious problems, making them more likely to become hotbeds of extreme terrorism. Therefore, unless the government has enough funds to resettle them and transform them into civilized people, the result will inevitably be the division and confrontation of domestic society..."

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Cameron was not unaware of what Barron said, but the problem now was that Britain did not have enough money to accommodate refugees. Under the "comparison" of other EU member states, they could not be too determined to reject those immigrants. At least they could not say that they would not allow any of them to stay. They had to pretend to do so.

"If Turkey insists on using refugees to threaten Europe, then we should also respond, for example, by giving more support to the Kurds..."

“Kurds?”

After hearing Barron's words, Cameron fell into thought.