This will be the case if the deadly virus continues to surge in the three worst-affected states – Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone – and spreads further across West Africa. The World Bank’s Senior Economist Kristen Himelein gave her comment on the first-order losses to Sputnik News:
“What we’ve seen is kind of a general slowdown – people aren’t working, their travel restrictions, goods and services can’t be provided, things can’t move… And we should remember those are very poor countries, so what we’ve seen is that Ebola has exacerbated some of the existing vulnerabilities. We’ve also seen very high prices.”
Not only are the economic losses immense, which are snowballing and could cause what experts call efforts to avoid infection, i.e., reductions in the consumption of mass services like transport, tourism, or retail shopping. Chris Pardee, Manager of Health Intelligence at iJET International gives more examples.
“As long as the disease continues to be an issue in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, it’s going to have more and more of an economic impact in those countries, but it will also have an additional economic impact in the rest of Africa, which we’ve already started to see as far as lost tourism revenue, or international companies pulling out of areas just for fear of the disease spreading to new countries.”
But this is not the whole story. As scientists scramble to find a cure for the killer disease, the global pharmaceutical business chases big profits. The WHO has officially blamed Big Pharma’s greed for a delay in the development of an Ebola vaccine. Since the virus was discovered, many pharmaceutical companies have been reluctant to pursue a vaccine, partly because the virus did not spread beyond Central Africa. However, analysts doubt that the current threat of the disease reaching other countries and even continents could mean the final product – once it is found – would reach the masses.
According to the Public Library of Science, prices of vaccine packages that treat nearly a dozen diseases increased by around 2700% in the period between 2001 and 2011. As a result, children living in third countries do not receive immunization as often as their counterparts in more developed regions.
On the other hand, when news of a pharmaceutical company’s work towards a vaccine against Ebola broke in July 2014, its price share increased by 18%. There is also a great disparity in the price of medication issued by, say, American and Indian pharmaceutical companies. Meanwhile, an affordable vaccine could make a big difference at the current critical juncture in the fight against Ebola as the number of new cases steadily eases. Finally, the Ebola hysteria boosted sales of emergency supplies from gloves to surgical masks and plastic suits.
The World Bank is mobilizing around $1 billion to support the countries hardest hit by the crisis. Also, whilst numerous nations from around the world have reportedly provided humanitarian aid, tangible results from many of them have been rather slow. As the epidemic is far from over and continues to spread through West Africa, we are likely to see interested parties increasingly feathering their nest on what is probably going to become one of the most expensive pandemics ever.
