Ebola vaccine ‘does not exist because it mainly affects Africans’

PHARMACEUTICAL companies are
unwilling to invest in vaccines and
research to cure the deadly Ebola
disease because it is only killing
Africans, a leading UK doctor has
claimed.
Professor John Ashton, president
of the UK Faculty of Public Health,
has claimed no cure for the
disease has been discovered
because it so far has only affected
powerless minorities.
He likened the response to that of
AIDS, for which treatments were
developed only when it started
affecting western countries.
The current Ebola outbreak which
has no vaccine, no cure and kills
up to 90 per cent of victims, is
currently ravaging the West African
countries of Guinea, Sierra Leone,
Nigeria and Liberia.
There have been 729 deaths from
1,329 confirmed cases of Ebola in
this year’s epidemic – making it
the largest Ebola outbreak in
history. Writing in the Independent
on Sunday, Professor Ashton said:
‘We must respond to this
emergency as if it was in
Kensington, Chelsea, and
Westminster.
‘We must also tackle the scandal
of the unwillingness of the
pharmaceutical industry to invest
in research to produce treatments
and vaccines, something they
refuse to do because the numbers
involved are, in their terms, so
small and don’t justify the
investment.