25.05.1995

Fevered imagination

REPORTS in the press that the incurable disease Ebola is a mass threat to the world are nonsense. All viral diseases (such as the cold, flu, chickenpox, etc) are ‘incurable’, but the overwhelming majority of people recover as a result of the body’s own resistance. The two people infected by Ebola in Europe both recovered.

The disease was spread in Ethiopia by 200 people being injected with the same unsterilised syringe. Conditions in Zaire’s hospitals are so bad that the medical staff had no protective clothing.

If there were any real risk of the virus spreading in Western Europe a vaccine could almost certainly be produced in weeks: unlike with Aids the survivors all show normal anti-body response to infection and there does not seem to be wide variation of viral type.

However the World Health Organisation is in utter disarray and, at the moment, it would be unable to take on the problem of eliminating the disease as it once managed to do with smallpox.

It is true that the conditions of abject poverty suffered by most of the world’s population form a permanent threat to the health of everyone. The New Scientist last week reported the result of research showing that, not only did areas of poverty act as a reservoir for disease, but that poor diet also causes infectious diseases to mutate. It cited China as the major area for the development of new flu viruses.

The ‘cure’ for Ebola lies in combating global poverty - and that means getting rid of the diseased capitalist system which creates it.

John Bayliss