Ebola “is the most severe acute health emergency in modern times.” This was the message delivered by the World Health Organization in Manila. This coincided with confirmed deaths in West Africa from the disease eclipsing 4400 and those effected up beyond 9000.

Some experts, however, believe that the actual death toll is considerably higher, with some saying well over 10,000. This was not the only horrific news coming out of the WHO’s comments.

In a written statement from Dr. Margaret Chan, the organization’s Director-General (delivered by her deputy, Dr. Bruce Aylward), the group warned of dire consequences for Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the three most afflicted states.

According to Chan, Ebola ”…threaten[s] the very survival of societies and governments in already very poor countries.” Chan went further, saying that she had “never seen an infectious disease contribute so strongly to potential state failure.”

While doubting the horror inflicted by the disease on an already vulnerable part of the world would be nonsensical, “state failure” is a term of art used to describe countries where there is an utter breakdown and failure of governance.

Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone are not pillars of good governance, but to potentially lump them in with failed states contributes to the apocalyptic rhetoric surrounding Ebola that has so pervaded the international discussion and hampered relief efforts.

We discussed earlier on AFKInsider the wide gap that existed between public health experts and pundits in rhetorical flourish. While the latter advocated for complete isolation for the three countries, the former cautioned the disastrous effects that isolation could bring.

No one would question Dr. Chan or the WHO’s public health bona fides and the statement shows a growing concern that the disease is growing exponentially while aid efforts are stalling, a dangerous combination.

However, state failure is a far cry from the situation within the borders of the three West African states. As to what constitutes a failed state, let us look to both a proposed definition and the consummate failed state, Somalia.

While there is no internationally accepted answer to what precisely constitutes a failed state, many scholars and policymakers have attempted to create such a definition.

Control of Territories

This includes international bodies such as the United Nations and the United Nations Development Programme along with prominent non-governmental organizations such as the Fund for Peace or Brookings Institution.

Among the most prevalent factors are control of territory, ability to provide services to the population, accountability for political actors and institutional development. Put rather simply, a failed state is unable to do that which makes a successful state a successful state.

Even without an internationally accepted definition, the wide variety of organizations that have attempted to measure state failure have agreed on Somalia as the representative failed state. While the country attempts to pull together into a coherent state, it has, for the last decade, topped the majority of such lists of failed states.

Perhaps the most prominent such list is the Fund for Peace’s annual Fragile States Index (known until this year as the Failed States Index), where Somalia held the number one spot until it was ousted by South Sudan this year.

So what is it that puts Somalia on the top of many of such lists? The answer is a near complete breakdown of what makes a state a state.

According to the Fund for Peace, “Somalia today represents a hollow shell of the state it was prior to the collapse of its government in 1991.” This includes a troubling lack of security in the country, corruption and a near complete inability to provide governance and services.

On the security end, Somalia continues to struggle with the militant group Al-Shabaab along with maritime piracy. While the country has made gains against both, they continue to be tremendous problems and make it difficult to claim any semblance of state security.

According to a recent confidential report by the United Nations Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea seen by the AFP, Al-Shabaab is as “deadly as ever.” While the African Union and Somalia have attempted to beat back the Islamist group, “Strategic strikes have in general resulted in short term gains but significantly failed to diminish Al-Shebab’s operation capacity.”

The report also detailed troubling levels of corruption in the East African country. The country, always a haven for corrupt governance, has not improved.

According to the report, “underlying corruption as a system of governance has not yet fundamentally changed and, in some cases, arguably has worsened.” This is wholly unsurprising for a country that ranked 175 out of 177 countries surveyed in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index in 2013.

Andrew Friedman is a human rights attorney and consultant who works and writes on legal reform and constitutional law with an emphasis on Africa. He can be reached via email at afriedm2@gmail.com or via twitter @AndrewBFriedman.