21 August 2014 (05:43 UTC-07 Tango)/24 Shawwal 1435/30 Mordad 1393/26 Ren-Shen 4712
“Our medical people don’t know about this virus…”-Neh Dukuly Tolbert, Liberian ambassador to China, revealing how they’ve been kept in the dark and abandoned by ‘Christian West’, and now appealing to China for help
Recent statements by officials at the United Nations have revealed that the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak in western Africa could have been stopped in its tracks if the ‘western’ Christian countries of Europe and North America had paid the promised funding for international health care. So far the only country that has kept its promises to fight EVD in Africa is China!
In Liberia, Chinese ‘peacekeeping’ troops have been leading UN supply efforts, since the Chinese have the only logistics unit in-country. There are more than 690 Chinese troops in the former colony of the United States.
There are also 1500 Chinese civilians working in Liberia. Chinese corporate officials have reported that many international health groups have actually begun fleeing Liberia, leaving Liberian health officials overwhelmed. Chinese officials also report that Liberians are panicking and breaking into residences and drug stores in search of medication, any kind of medication.
Only three international airlines are willing to fly in and out of Liberia, and the UN is now calling for “exit screenings” for all people wanting to leave the affected countries.
As of 21 August more than 460 Liberians have died from EVD. 39 were medical staff. China has promised to send medical teams to help the Liberian Health Ministry. China already has medical teams in Sierra Leone dealing with other Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD). Those teams have been rotated every two years and are now focusing on fighting EVD, in fact, one week ago China delivered $4.2-million in medical equipment and cash to help Sierra Leone fight EVD.
The affected countries have been trying to raise their own money by selling government bonds, but it’s not enough (who want’s to buy bonds from countries with poor economies and long track records of internal war?).
At the beginning of August the U.S. based World Bank promised $200-million USD in “emergency funding”, but that is not free, it is in the form of loans (“financing”): “Governments are almost totally reliant on international aid and healthcare expertise to co-ordinate and fund the containment strategy. The selling of debt remains a poor option for impoverished west African countries seeking to fund the fight.”-Charles Laurie, Maplecroft consultancy
At the end of July the European Union promised $5.2-million, but added that they would send medical teams to “assess the situation”.
The United Kingdom promised $5-million to fight ebola in Africa, and the U.S. promised unspecified funding, but so far nothing is materializing, mainly because the funding is still being debated by lawmakers (this is why Prime Ministers and Presidents should not go around promising money when they have to rely on Congress or Parliament to approve it).
Newsweek recently reported that the United States was “sitting” on promised ebola vaccines, and they blame U.S. corporations: “The lack of funding is largely due to a lack of interest shown by pharmaceutical companies, for whom a rural, relatively low-kill African disease presents no lucrative market.”
A U.S. doctor in Texas is not surprised that the U.S. is failing to fund international healthcare efforts, because the U.S. fails at home as well: “It’s almost as though we do not want to admit that we have poverty in this country. But the truth is that we have 20-million Americans who live in extreme poverty and almost 2-million Americans living on less than $2 a day, and they’re all infected with NTDs!”-Peter Hotez, National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine