George Poe Williams, Liberia and Ghana Directed by Christine Boateng
When a deadly outbreak of Ebola hit West Africa in 2014, there were no antiviral vaccines or treatments available to prevent or treat it, even though the disease had first been discovered nearly half a century earlier. Repeat outbreaks of Ebola had killed thousands of people, yet pharmaceutical companies had not invested time and money to produce medicines to treat it. Then director-general of the World Health Organisation, Margaret Chan, slammed the pharmaceutical industry for its inaction, arguing that investment was lacking “because Ebola has historically been confined to poor African nations”.
The outbreak in 2014-16 killed over 11,000 people across Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, including 500 health workers. This particularly deadly outbreak did hasten work on Ebola
medicines, with the first one finally approved in 2019. Even then however, big pharma companies had little to do with it, with the public sector in Canada driving research, development and trials. Antiviral treatments for Ebola have also been developed since 2016, but the global health divide persists, with most of those treatments stockpiled in the US and rarely available in the countries most affected by Ebola.
George Poe Williams is a Liberian Nurse, trade unionist, and campaigner for workers' rights, quality health services, and vaccine equity. As general secretary of National Health Workers Union of Liberia, he advocated for the health of doctors and nurses during the 2014-16 outbreak of Ebola.