Don't be scared, be angry: the politics and ethics of Ebola

The current outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in West Africa is the worst so far. As of 20 August 2014, 2240 confirmed cases and 1229 deaths have been recorded by the World Health Organization.1

While the possibility of an EVD outbreak in Australia should not worry us,2 the social, economic and political conditions associated with the present outbreak should. EVD has been characterised as an African disease spread through African culture.3 However, we argue that many aspects of this outbreak represent a continuation of crises whose root cause lies in neoliberal economic policies that emphasise the free market as the primary driver of economic growth, innovation and allocation of resources.4

Two aspects of the outbreak and the way in which it has been managed support this contention. First, the lack of vaccines and medications for EVD is evidence that markets cannot reliably supply treatments for epidemic diseases where the number of affected individuals is small. Second, the public infrastructure needed to prevent and control an infectious disease outbreak has been eroded in many West African nations over the past 40 years. Alongside war, political instability and corruption, the collapse of social infrastructure has resulted from structural adjustment and trade liberalisation programs promoted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. We need to understand these political and economic problems as the conditions underlying disease outbreaks.5