The top global health priority

Ebola is a nightmare disease. In countries with few healthcare workers, their number has been further reduced because some of those caring for Ebola sufferers have caught the disease and died. Even before the disease arrived, the two countries worst affected, Sierra Leone and Liberia, had health services ranging from poor to non-existent. If Ebola had been designed by the Devil to target the human race at its weakest point, those are two countries it could have chosen. The symptoms are frightening, there is no immunisation or vaccination available, and it spreads easily but invisibly by bodily contact. In an African culture, where physical contact with the dead is part of the accepted mourning process, that is particularly dangerous. But even healthcare workers using the best barrier-nursing techniques have proved susceptible. In such a situation, normal life gives way to panic and terror.

It is ironic that these nations were both founded with the mainly philanthropic intention of giving an African home to freed slaves from North America and the Atlantic slave trade. Founded – and then neglected, at least until valuable mineral reserves were discovered. Both countries have recently been ravaged by civil war, which further depleted their health services. In neighbouring Nigeria and Guinea, the disease has been held in check by better, though still inadequate, public health measures.

In Liberia and Sierra Leone, health services are mainly provided by religious organisations, whose members are, therefore, among the victims. They are desperate for supplies of drugs and medical equipment, even as basic as protective clothing, boots, disinfectant and soap. It is clear that the world has not yet realised the scale of the disaster in West Africa, for such needs could easily be met. Media coverage in the West has focused largely on the danger of infected immigrants bringing the disease with them and threatening indigenous populations. The best defence against that is to tackle the disease at source. The Government’s announcement that a Royal Navy hospital ship is being deployed to help Sierra Leone is a welcome step in the right direction.

A few Western health workers with Ebola have been flown home from West Africa for treatment, under an intense media spotlight. While those affected have been heroes, even martyrs, who deliberately put themselves in harm’s way for the sake of others, this also exacerbates the impression that the lives of white people are worth more than the lives of Africans. 

Ebola needs to become the number one global public health priority. The experts say the epidemic may be on the brink of escaping its West African confines to the rest of the Continent and the world. If pharmaceutical companies hesitate to invest to develop a vaccine because they are unsure of a profit, Western governments must offer guarantees so the work can be stepped up without delay. Meanwhile funding for Sierra Leone’s and Liberia’s healthcare budget should be increased tenfold. It should be on every conscience that a shortage of boots and bleach is standing in the way of effective disease control.