How to Confront the Threat of Ebola? Arguing for Reinforced Efforts to Promote Transnational Solidarity
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12306 |
| Author | Markus Fraundorfer |
| Date | 01 September 2016 |
| Published date | 01 September 2016 |
How to Confront the Threat of Ebola? Arguing
for Reinforced Efforts to Promote Transnational
Solidarity
Markus Fraundorfer
Institute of International Relations, University of S~
ao Paulo
Abstract
The Ebola epidemic in 2014 in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone demonstrated for the first time that in an interdependent
and interconnected world the Ebola virus is no longer a negligible threat limited in its lethal impact to a few isolated African
villages. By linking Carol Gould’s concept of transnational solidarity with the concept of transnational advocacy networks, this
article argues that a variety of actors from governments, academia, civil society and the private sector must join forces to
establish a mechanism with the potential to considerably accelerate research and development (R&D) on Ebola. By presenting
the key logic underlying three existing public–private partnerships on neglected diseases, the Drugs for Neglected Diseases
initiative (DNDi), the TB Alliance and the Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV), the article tries to identify the principal char-
acteristics of such a new mechanism to successfully pool resources, knowledge and expertise for the development of tested
and effective Ebola treatment. The article concludes by emphasising that the present atmosphere of transnational solidarity
with those African countries affected by the Ebola epidemic represents a unique window of opportunity to create such a
mechanism.
Policy Implications
•To prevent a future Ebola outbreak with potentially disastrous consequences actors from governments, civil society and
the private sector should join forces and launch a public–private partnership with the objective of developing effective
treatments for Ebola.
•This public–private partnership should develop the potential to significantly accelerate R&D on Ebola by pooling the
knowledge, expertise and compound libraries of all relevant actors involved and thus creating a virtual and global labora-
tory on Ebola drug development.
•The partnership should be modelled on similar existing partnerships on neglected diseases, such as the Drugs for
Neglected Diseases initiative, the TB Alliance or the Medicines for Malaria Venture, which achieved to significantly acceler-
ate and dynamise R&D on a range of neglected diseases.
•The inherent logic of this partnership should be based on the production of Ebola vaccines as global public goods for
patients in need rather than a market-based approach favouring the commercial interests of pharmaceutical companies.
The threat of Ebola
In 2014, the world witnessed the most serious Ebola out-
break
1
which had ever occurred, claiming the lives of more
than 10,000 people in the West African countries of Guinea,
Liberia and Sierra Leone (MSF, 2015). The virus had spread
to Europe and North America
2
sowing fear and terror in the
face of the absence of a tested drug and the horrendous
death toll it was causing in Western Africa. More than one
year after the outbreak the cases are finally declining (WHO,
2015a). The civil society organisation M
edecins Sans Fron-
ti
eres (MSF) learned of the first suspicious cases of a ‘myste-
rious disease’in Guinea in March 2014 and immediately
recognised the severity of what was to become the largest
Ebola outbreak ever in West Africa (MSF, 2015, pp. 5–6).
Within the first few weeks, MSF moved more than 60 MSF
international staff to Guinea to combat the outbreak (MSF,
2015, p. 6). MSF sounded the alarm bell twice, the first time
on 31 March and the second time on 21 June (MSF, 2015, p.
7). The first time, MSF declared that ‘[Guinea was] facing an
epidemic of a magnitude never before seen in terms of the
distribution of cases in the country’and that the virus strain
detected was ‘the most aggressive and deadly’one, the so-
called Zaire strain (MSF, 2014a). On 21 June, MSF declared
the epidemic ‘out of control’and warned that ‘[w]ith the
appearance of new sites in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia,
there is a real risk of it spreading to other areas’(MSF,
2014b). The World Health Organization (WHO), however,
downplayed these warnings and gravely underestimated the
dynamic spread of the virus (MSF, 2015, pp. 6–7). Although
the WHO is the central international organisation in global
health governance with the mandate to coordinate action
©2016 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Global Policy (2016) 7:3 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12306
Global Policy Volume 7 . Issue 3 . September 2016
340
Research Article
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