World Health Chief Rips 'Profit-Driven' Healthcare Industry for Ebola Fail

[Judi Lynn]

Published on Tuesday, November 04, 2014

by Common Dreams

World Health Chief Rips 'Profit-Driven' Healthcare Industry for Ebola Fail

Africa's infrastructure failures, WHO director-general says, include development in sectors 'that favor the elite'

by Lauren McCauley, staff writer

Speaking before a gathering of African health ministers on Monday, the leader of the World Health Organization (WHO) said that the blame for the Ebola crisis lays largely on the "profit-driven" pharmaceutical industry, which does not invest in cures "for markets that cannot pay."

WHO director-general Dr. Margaret Chan made the comments while speaking before the Regional Committee for Africa, made up of representatives from the 47 African nations, which is meeting this week in Cotonou, Republic of Benin.

During her address, Chan said that despite Africa's recent economic and social gains, the Ebola outbreak bolsters two arguments that WHO has long made "that have fallen on deaf ears for decades [and] are now out there with consequences that all the world can see, every day, on prime-time TV news."

One, she said, is the failure to put basic public health infrastructures in place. The second argument, Chan said, is the reason that clinicians are "still empty-handed, with no vaccines and no cure," despite Ebola having emerged nearly four decades ago: "Because Ebola has historically been confined to poor African nations. The R&D incentive is virtually non-existent. A profit-driven industry does not invest in products for markets that cannot pay."

More:
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/11/04/world-health-chief-rips-profit-driven-healthcare-industry-ebola-fail

[geek tragedy]

1. He's correct, but the obvious question is who should and would pay for it? nt