According to Pfeiffer, who is a professor of global health and anthropology at the University of Washington, the popular narrative of the Ebola outbreak often points to weak governance, poverty and poor health systems as one of the primary reasons why this infectious disease has exploded in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. That’s absolutely true, he says. But what is usually not mentioned in the narrative, Pfeiffer adds, is how Western agencies devoted to reducing global poverty like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank imposed policies on these countries (sometimes referred to as structural adjustment) that for decades has discouraged many African nations from investing in public infrastructure – such as basic health care systems.
Posted on: Tue, 23 Sep 2014 11:19:23 +0000
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