Africans Should Demand That US Do All It Can to Rid West Africa of Ebola
by Mel Reeves
“Lateness and foot dragging is really at the bottom of this outbreak.”
The US and the West’s response to the Ebola crisis has been woefully inadequate, slow and late. In fact, the US response, which was to first send troops, is indicative of what is really important to the US and the West: conquest and control, not compassion and care. Therefore, it is the duty of pan-Africanists and those of us of African descent to demand the US and the West to do all it can to immediately end this deadly outbreak.
Africans in the US have a long history of standing up for our brethren on the continent. African Americans took to the streets to protest the invasion of Ethiopia by Italy and supported Africa’s efforts to rid itself of colonialism in the late1950’s and 1960’s. We loudly protested the murder of Patrice Lumumba and the former colonialists’ attempts to re-colonize Africa. We opposed South African Apartheid. We protested when Libyan president Mohamar Khadafi was attacked by the Bush administration. To our collective shame we sat silent as the black president of the US, Barack Obama, bombed Libya and allowed Khadafi to be murdered like a stray dog.
It’s time to renew that tradition and speak up. The West’s slow and inadequate response to this deadly virus shows we cannot sit on our hands and hope for the best.
Dr. Kent Brantly, one of the Americans who recovered from Ebola after being treated in Atlanta, testified before the US Senate that, "this unprecedented outbreak began nine months ago but received very little attention from the international community until the events of mid-July when my friend and colleague, Nancy Writebol, and I became infected. The response, however, is still unacceptably out-of-step with the size and scope of the problem now before us."
And almost as insidious as the disease and the apathy is the sinister attempt to blame the victims of the disease. You have heard the rumors: the Africans aren’t taking care of themselves; their superstitions and customs are preventing treatment; they neglect their medical infrastructure. This attempt to obfuscate and cover up the West’s indifference can be seen in the attempt to demonize Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian who became the first Ebola victim to die in the United States.
“Duncan was not given the urgent care that was accorded the white patients who had been flown stateside.”
It’s becoming obvious that Duncan didn’t necessarily have to die. He walked into Dallas Health Presbyterian with Ebola symptoms and told them he was from Liberia but was placed on a stretcher and sent home with antibiotics because he lacked health insurance. When he returned a few days later he was still not given the urgent care that was accorded the white patients who had been flown stateside. In fact it appears his relatives had to contact the Center for Disease Control before doctors at Texas Health would acknowledge that he had Ebola. He was not flown to Atlanta or Omaha where they were much more prepared than Dallas. And he was not given any of the experimental drugs that were available including TKM-Ebola, produced by Tekmira Pharmaceutical out of Canada which, according to theverge.com, has recently been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for use after passing animal trials and human experimentation. Duncan was given the anti-viral drug Brincidofovir five days after re-entering the hospital – unfortunately, much too late to have had a chance to be effective. And, of course, the drug cocktail ZMapp that seemed to help the Americans recover was no longer available.
But why wasn’t it? The drug proved effective in aiding the recovery of US aide workers. Lateness and foot dragging is really at the bottom of this outbreak. Even former US president Jimmy Carter has admitted as much. “Everybody knows now that the United States and the international community got started too late …later than they should have,” he said.
The slow response has been acknowledged by medical experts all over the world. In the past, the medical community has treated Ebola outbreaks like small forest fires and simply sat back and tried to contain it, rather than searching for a treatment or cure. Thus, hundreds of African’s perished because their lives were not prioritized. I can’t imagine that an outbreak of a deadly virus in the West would be met with the response: Oh, we will simply let it run its course and contain those who have it. NO, they would have moved heaven and earth to find a cure and a treatment.
But these are poor black Africans!
“The treatment and cure have been held up until now because of the need for pharmaceuticals to make profit.”
“We must respond to this emergency as if it was in Kensington, Chelsea, and Westminster. This is the moral bankruptcy of capitalism acting in the absence of an ethical and social framework,” complained Dr. John Ashton, president of the UK Faculty of Public Health.
But the treatment and cure have been held up until now quite simply because of the need for pharmaceuticals to make profit. “Large companies will not invest in research and development for rare and neglected diseases, due to the limited scope for profit. They will continue producing the medicines that can make the highest profits rather than the therapies that are desperately needed for public health,” said Mohga Kamal-Yanni, of Oxfam, in a recent Independent (UK) news story. No big profit, no medicine. Add in racism and you have the perfect excuse to neglect poor and black Africans. These are the real reasons the West has sat back for 40 years and delayed until now the serious development of a treatment and a vaccine.
According to recent reports by NBC news and theverge.com, a vaccine has been developed and is being tested in Mali. The vaccine was developed at the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health. A consortium led by the University of Maryland is carrying out the trial.
The pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline is manufacturing the vaccine that is being tested on people in the US and the UK as well and it is expected that about 10,000 volumes of the vaccine will be ready by the end of the year. Experts say that it takes six months to get a vaccine ready and to market, but because this was rushed they were able to do it sooner. This again begs the question: Why wasn’t it developed sooner?
While we are calling for treatment and a vaccine we have to remain cautious, because of the history of Africans and African Americans being used as guinea pigs for Western medicine. And yes, the US has been researching Ebola as a potential biological weapon. That’s right, these folks we have so much trust and confidence in are constantly looking for new and inventive ways to kill people. Research by Global Research has suggested that there may even have been foul play by the Tulane University researchers working in conjunction with the USAMRIID, the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, a well-known center for biological war research, located at Fort Detrick, Maryland.
“The US has been researching Ebola as a potential biological weapon.”
According to Global Research, “Sierra Leone recently kicked out all US Ebola researchers from Tulane University and the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID). Medical personnel complained that they were suspicious that the American biological warfare team may be responsible for the recent surge in deaths. The government then ordered the US bioweapons lab at Kenema to be moved due to the mounting anger of the local population blaming the Americans for infecting their citizens through their Ebola testing. Posted on the health ministry’s Facebook page is the conclusion that the diagnostic kits the US researchers have been using are fake and producing false results. It legitimately asks, “Have Tulane researchers done something to endanger public health?” “
And let’s be clear, the rich countries owe much of their so-called development to Africa. And nowadays the West still imports much of their resources from Africa, including oil, gold diamonds, silver, uranium, iron ore, cobalt, rubber, cobalt and even the stuff cell phones are made from.
Therefore, it’s only fair that the US and the rest of the West do all it can to help West Africa in this crisis. The US has invested trillions in making war; a small percentage of that could help end the Ebola crisis.
Dr. Brantley summed it up well: “We don’t need to be worried that a plane flying over is going to somehow contaminate us with Ebola. We need to be putting that aside and try to love our neighbors. Our neighbors are the people in West Africa who are suffering far beyond what we can understand or fathom."
So we are right to advance the demand that the US and the West move with all deliberate speed to help our brothers and sisters in crisis. Please join the Young People’s Freedom and Justice Party and others all over the country on Thursday, October 16, in rallying and demanding that the vaccine, treatment, medical supplies, food, medical facilities, emergency vehicles and whatever else is needed to arrest this plague be delivered with ALL DELIBERATE SPEED.
Mel Reeves is a community organizer living in Minneapolis. He welcomes reader response to [email protected].
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