April 13, 2014 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - In the Guardian’s article, “Panic as deadly Ebola virus spreads across West Africa,” it reports:Since the outbreak of the deadly strain of Zaire Ebola in Guinea in February, around 90 people have died as the disease has travelled to neighbouring Sierra Leone, Liberia and Mali. The outbreak has sent shock waves through communities who know little of the disease or how it is transmitted. The cases in Mali have added to fears that it is spreading through West Africa.
The
Guardian also reported that Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), also known
in English as Doctors Without Borders, had established treatment
centers in Guinea, one of which came under attack as locals accused the
foreign aid group of bringing the disease into the country. Also under
fire is the government of Guinea itself, which has proved incapable of
handling the crisis.
This
latest outbreak, which has yet to be contained and is being considered
by Doctors Without Borders as an “unprecedented epidemic,” illustrates
several troubling truths about global health care, emergency response to
outbreaks, and the perception many have of a West subjecting the
developing world to a “medical tyranny.”
Failure to Prepare
In 2012, when Doctors Without Borders concluded its response to an Ebola outbreak in Uganda, it claimed in its post, “MSF Concludes Emergency Ebola Response in Uganda,” that:
The Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) emergency response to an outbreak of Ebola in Uganda has come to an end. The MSF team handed over the Ebola treatment center it set up in Uganda’s western Kibaale district to the Ugandan Ministry of Health (MoH).
The statement also claimed:
As part of a preparation plan for future outbreaks, MSF also restored a treatment unit in Mulago hospital, located in Kampala, Uganda’s capital. “Uganda has developed the capacity to respond to Ebola emergencies,” said MSF emergency coordinator Olimpia de la Rosa. “We can rely on the capability of Ministry of Health staff to take over and manage Ebola cases with all safety guarantees.”
One must wonder then, if MSF and other
global health agencies can train Ugandan medical staff and hand over
responsibilities to prevent a future outbreak to the government of
Uganda, why haven’t similar provisions been undertaken in nations like
Guinea, Liberia, Mali, and Sierra Leone. According to the World Health Organization (WHO),
Ebola outbreaks occur “primarily in remote villages in Central and West
Africa, near tropical rainforests.” Why then have nations in Central
and West Africa not been prepared for such outbreaks – particularly when
the many of the nations that back MSF are already heavily involved in
the internal affairs of many of these nations?
France alone has expended hundreds of millions of euros during its ongoing military operations in Mali, reported by France 24 in 2013 to
be costing the European nation approximately 2.7 million euros a day.
Money spent on costly military operations designed to project Western
hegemony across Northern and Western Africa, an extension of the West’s
intervention in Libya, would lead one to believe that funds should also
be available to prevent “unprecedented epidemics” of deadly diseases
like Ebola, but apparently the same preparations made in Uganda have
been neglected in French-occupied Mali, as well as other Ebola-prone
nations.
While the West poses as chief arbiter of
humanity and through its international organizations, intervening when
crises strike, its failure to prepare other nations prone to Ebola
outbreaks with a management formula already perfected in Uganda at the
very least shakes public confidence and trust. When it intervenes in
these very nations for geopolitical ambitions under the pretenses of
“democracy,” “development,” and “human rights” but utterly fails to
address the dire needs of the very people it claims to be rushing to the
aid of, such confidence and trust is only further shaken.
Distrust Leads to Suspicion
