Thursday 16 October 2014

Ebola: Nothing New? A Swedish Perspective



Svenska Dagbladet on some of the myths surrounding the Ebola Virus (in Swedish)

The perspective of Inger Atterstam:

"The truth is that Ebola has been known for forty years, a devastating aggressive killer virus found in Africa...which occasionally results in outbreaks in humans, particularly in Congo and Uganda. There is an outbreak that kills perhaps a hundred people each time, and then burns itself out and wanes. Ebola has long been deemed not to be a threat to the rest of the world, and therefore irrelevant in terms of the well-established commercial logic that has for decades influenced the view that we in the rich world could neglect diseases in poor countries. The poor simply cannot pay for treatments and medications, and therefore no profits are generated for the pharmaceutical industry. This 'logic' dominates both in industry and in international medical research in general".

Related article: David Heymann in The Guardian

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