On Monday, the director general of the World Health Organization, Dr. Margaret Chan, criticized the drug industry by saying that one of the main reasons why a viable Ebola vaccine has not yet been made available is because of the driver profit. During a speech that she gave at a regional conference, Dr. Chan also publicly denounced the lack of effective health systems within the countries that are the hardest hit by the current Ebola outbreak.
According to data that have been gathered by the WHO, there are at least 13,565 people who are now infected with the deadly Ebola virus, with nearly 5,000 lives already lost. Most of the cases occurred in the countries of Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea save for a few cases that were documented in other countries.
Dir. Gen. Chan had long been cautious about the consequences of the role of money and profit in drug development, saying that greed fuels the blatant neglect of public health.
"WHO arguments that have fallen on deaf ears for decades are now out there with consequences that all the world can see, every day, on primetime TV news. A profit driven industry does not invest in products for markets that cannot pay. The WHO has been trying to make this issue visible for ages. Now people can see for themselves," she said.
Dr. Chen had said, time and again, that the current Ebola crisis "is the most severe acute public-health emergency seen in modern times." Since the outbreak had begun showing signs of escalating into a worldwide public health emergency, concerted efforts have been put into formulating a vaccine that would help in preventing the further spread of the virus across West Africa and around the globe. The WHO hopes that human trials could begin next month
for experimental vaccines that are currently being produced by several pharmaceutical companies.
