PHM calls on WHO's member states in African region to address hard questions related to Ebola epidimic

Posted Tue, 2014-11-04 01:01

The 64th Session of the WHO's Regional Committee of Africa will meet in Cotonou, Benin from 3-7 November 2014. The PHM has developed a commentary on selected agenda items in front of this meeting. Among these items is Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

The PHM urges the members of the Regional Committee to insist on full consideration of the following questions:

  • Why are poor countries vulnerable to EVD and limited in their capacity to respond? Why are the three centrally affected countries poor?
  • Why do people lack confidence in the public health system?
  • Could WHO, globally, regionally and nationally have done more to highlight the risk of EVD in the years since 1976?
  • What research has been done since 1976 into vaccine and treatment development and by whom?
  • Why has EVD been ignored by both public and private pharmaceutical R&D?     Who should have been warning and researching about the possible implications, in terms of contact with animal hosts, of mining, palm oil plantations, the displacement of people in West Africa by agribusiness?

Read the full PHM commentary.