Ebola: An immoral story.

When was the last time you became aware of a health story which frightened you as much as the current situation with the ebola virus in West Africa? In my life, people were quite scared in the 1980s when HIV first became apparent but that is now a relatively well treated disease. I also recall the H5N1 version of Avian Flu which was (and still is) so prevalent in South-East Asia. At about the same time, we also had to be aware of the SARS virus which caused many deaths due to it's effects on the respiratory system.

So what I hear you ask. We've always had disease so what is my point? Last week, Margaret Chan delivered a speech to the United Nations which should have been blanket broadcast on every television and radio channel in the world. It is a sad reflection of our world that when someone has something to say which has a direct bearing on all of us, only the chosen few get to hear of it. I am writing this blog in an attempt to reach a wider audience with that same message.

Margaret Chan is an extraordinary lady. She was elected Chief Executive of the World Health Organisation in 2006 having previously been director of health in the Hong Kong government since 1994. She is a formidable woman with considerable influence.

Responding to the recent Ebola crisis in West Africa she delivered a speech whose content should be etched in the minds of all of us. Among the points she made in her speech, she asserted that:

• She had never seen a health event threaten the survival of societies and governments in already very poor countries.
• She had never seen an infectious disease contribute so strongly to potential state failure.
• There are great dangers in the world's growing social and economic inequalities.
• The rich get the best care. The poor are left to die.
• Ebola emerged 40 years ago but that no vaccine or remedy had been developed because the profit-driven pharmaceutical industry had no incentive to make products for countries which couldn't pay. 
• When a deadly and dreaded virus hits the destitute and spirals out of control, the whole world is put at risk.
• Inadequate healthcare means that the types of shocks which the world is experiencing (including extreme weather events resulting from climate change, armed conflict or a disease "run wild") could bring a fragile country to it's knees.
• Rumours and panic are spreading so much faster than the virus itself that the World Bank estimates that 90% of the economic costs of any outbreak come from irrational and disorganised efforts of the public to avoid infection.
• The world is ill prepared to to respond to any severe, sustained and threatening public health emergency.        

The last point is perhaps the most chilling if only for the fact that this was the conclusion reached when the WHO reported 5 years ago in the aftermath of the avian fly pandemic. But for me, the most appalling points on the list have to be the 4th and 5th.

It is utterly shameful that the value of a human life is deemed to be less in West Africa than elsewhere. In 2012, an estimated 627,000 people died from malaria with 90% occurring in Africa. The deaths were mostly children under the age of 5. But if the emerging Ebola outbreak and the existing statistics on malaria are shocking, the statistics on hunger and starvation are morally indefensible. In 2013, 3.1 million children under the age of 5 died from a very old and well known disease called starvation. Charles Dickens wrote freely about starvation as a part of every day life in Victorian Britain. 150 years later, it seems that we have morally gone in to reverse with the gap between the haves and have nots greater than ever.

Ebola would have had a vaccine developed decades ago had it first appeared in the US, the UK, France, Germany, Canada, Australia or one of the other countries in the developed world. In West Africa, life is cheap so the wait for a vaccine will depend on whether it spreads to the affluent countries. Speaking for myself, this makes me ashamed of the human race.