The head of the World Health Organization blames the “profit-driven” drug industry for the lack of an Ebola cure.
Dr. Margaret Chan, the general director of the W.H.O., said Monday that drug companies have been slow to invest in finding an Ebola cure because African nations are too poor to make it a profitable venture.
“A profit-driven industry does not invest in products for markets that cannot pay,” she said, according to the New York Times. “W.H.O. has been trying to make this issue visible for ages. Now people can see for themselves.”
Chan also bemoaned the poor quality of the public health systems in Ebola-afflicted nations.
“Two W.H.O. arguments that have fallen on deaf ears for decades are now out there with consequences that all the world can see, every day, on prime-time TV news,” she said.
Nearly 14,000 people — all but a few located in the West African nations of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone — have been diagnosed with the deadly virus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Nearly 5,000 have died.
Only two Americans have contracted the virus on U.S. soil. Both were nurses treating Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan, who was infected with the virus in Liberia.
