Professor John Ashton, the president of the UK Faculty of Public Health, has claimed there is no cure for Ebola because it affects minorities(Africans).. He said it was the same case with Aids as treatments were only developed when it started affecting western countries .Writing in the Daily independent, he said
We must respond to this emergency as if it was in Kensington, Chelsea, and Westminster.We must also tackle the scandal of the unwillingness of the pharmaceutical industry to invest in research to produce treatments and vaccines, something they refuse to do because the numbers involved are, in their terms, so small and don't justify the investment.. And we must "get real" over economic development.
However, in both cases it seems that the involvement of powerless minority groups has contributed to a tardiness of response and a failure to mobilise an adequately resourced international medical response. In the case of Aids, it took years for proper research funding to be put in place and it was only when so-called "innocent" groups were involved (women and children, haemophiliac patients and straight men) that the media, the politicians and the scientific community and funding bodies took notice.
So, in trying to strike the balance between complacency and panic, we should welcome the prominence given to Ebola over the past week
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