Cape Town - Foreign exploitation of the resources of Africa’s poorest nations has stripped away the ecological barriers that once kept the deadly Ebola virus at bay, and now allowed it to run rampant, Dr David Sanders, associate professor of biological sciences at Purdue University in Indiana, told those attending lunchtime prayers at Claremont Main Road Mosque on Friday.
Sanders was invited to give the address on Friday, before prayers, on one of his latest research papers, “Ebola epidemic exposes the pathology of the global and political system”. It was co- authored by Dr Amit Sengupta.
The paper, first published on the People’s Health Movement website last month, said 5 843 reported cases of Ebola had resulted in 2 803 deaths between March 22 and September 23. This excluded the hundreds of deaths as a result of other diseases like tuberculosis, HIV and malaria.
Sanders blamed the rampant spread of Ebola, which has a fatality rate of 60 percent, on three main factors: the exploitation of natural resources which has led to gross environmental changes, the continuing impoverishment of affected nations, and health system weaknesses.
“These deaths have been occurring for decades, not just in the last few months. Yet the global attention was not previously focused on these countries. For, to do so would force the rich and powerful… to confront the reality of Africa’s poverty and inequality,” he charged.
Foreign investment into countries like Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone had resulted in poor African nations exporting their natural resources – often leading to the destruction of forests to the detriment of their own needs.
In Liberia, one of the world’s leading producers of rubber, the country had no material to manufacture safety gloves for health workers treating Ebola patients.
Despite large foreign investments there, most people remained poor, foraging for food in forests, which in turn took them closer to infected animals.
“While many animals are known to be infected by the virus, it is now believed that the virus primarily resides in a few species of fruit bat… What is still a mystery is that the natural habitat of fruit bats lies in central Africa, where all earlier major outbreaks had taken place, hundreds of kilometres away from the epicentre of the present outbreak in west Africa,” he said.
The most plausible explanation, Sanders added, was the foreign exploitation of local resources like forests, which resulted in a major shift in the habitat of fruit bats.
While Ebola was the main media focus, Sanders said, there were dozens of diseases claiming the lives of impoverished Africans every day.
Most of the doctors from Sierra Leone and Liberia worked outside those countries.
Overwhelmed health workers who remained were often too scared to treat patients after the death of their colleagues.
Sanders said the short-term solution was to urgently treat those infected with Ebola, and to contain the epidemic. The long-term solution would require a major intervention.
“The environmental exploitation needs to be stopped. Both countries need to invest in their health systems, and not simply prioritise one disease like Ebola, but increase the level of treatment across all diseases.”
The brain drain of doctors and other health officials needed to be halted, along with corruption that drained resources.
Weekend Argus