EBOLA: CAPITALIST FAILURE COMPOUNDS THE PANDEMIC AND PUTS MILLIONS OF WORKING PEOPLE AT RISK

Working masses across West Africa must fight for a socialist health solution.

Press Statement

We of the Socialist Party join millions of working people across West Africa to commiserate with the families of victims of the Ebola pandemic that is currently ravaging countries across the sub-region. 

We reject the false bourgeois claim that Ebola is incurable and we contend that the absence of a drug for Ebola at this stage is as a result of the profit-first philosophy of capitalist pharmaceutical companies, who count the level of casualties in West Africa as infinitesimal for the purpose of investing research and production to generate super profit. For instance, it is reported in the media that Americans who got infected with the Ebola virus in Liberia are currently responding to treatment with an experimental drug "Zmapp". What this shows is that, on the basis of a people driven research and production, health emergencies like the Ebola virus can be defeated.

We view the spread of the virus to Nigeria as a major threat to millions of working people in the country, given the absence of critical basic health infrastructure, based on the decades of capitalist failure by successive regimes of the destructive ruling elite. Based on media reports, a Nigerian nurse who treated the Liberian Ebola victim has died. The Nigerian medical doctor who equally treated the victim and nine other primary contacts have also been confirmed as Ebola virus victims. It is appalling that the Liberian victim entered Nigeria, despite the massive propaganda by the Federal Government of putting measures in place to avoid the spread of the virus into Nigeria. 

We condemn the sheer dereliction and lack of seriousness demonstrated by the government in tackling the epidemic by quarantining a nurse, who is one of the primary contacts with the Liberian, in her house. This woman who was able to flee Lagos to Enugu has now potentially spread the virus beyond Lagos. 

We call for proper health surveillance at all points of entrance via the borders, airports and seaports in order to safeguard against the spread of the virus. We call for mass community mobilisation with democratic involvement of the mass of working people in setting up Community Precaution, Awareness and Emergency Committees to place a red alert against the spread of the dreaded disease.

We place the blame of the spread of the disease to Nigeria and across West Africa at the foot of the ruling elites across the country with the underpinning profit first capitalist crisis. We call on working masses across West Africa, the entire African continent and the entire world to step up the struggle for a democratic socialist solution wherein the enormous resources of society will be deployed for investment into research and production into meeting health emergencies of the millions of working people as against the profit first philosophy of capitalist pharmaceutical multinationals.

We call on workers, students, youth and the oppressed masses to join the SPN and build it as mass political platform for the millions of working people that could win political power and run government on the basis of the needs of the society and not the greed and profit motive of a few.

 

Segun Sango

National Chairperson