by A. Shaw

Athens, Greece – 15 October 2014

 

STATEMENT

 

Ebola virus deaths facilitated by imperialism

Only free and public healthcare systems with a focus on prevention can provide an adequate response

 

The Ebola epidemic that has struck mainly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea of West Africa and threatens the entire world has killed thousands of people and caused panic to millions of others.

As high level officials of the World Health Organization confess, the epidemic has severely expanded over the last weeks and 70% of the people affected die because of the lack of proper healthcare facilities.

This epidemic brings in the forefront in the most tragic way the chronic and deep wounds in the African Continent by colonialism, by the continuous plundering of the wealth-producing resources and by the high public debts that keep African states and their economies enslaved to the IMF, the World Bank and monopolies cartels.

Crucial problems that in extraordinary conditions such as the one today can create an explosive atmosphere are: The poverty, the malnutrition, the lack of basic healthcare infrastructure and social welfare, the limited access to a system of Public and Free Education capable to eradicate illiteracy and the effect of prejudices and superstitions, the slums that continue to exist being a disgrace for humanity and a danger to public health, the militarization and the state violence that are the answer of the panicked state mechanism.

The World Federation of Trade Unions expresses its indignation at the current situation in the existing healthcare facilities in the abovementioned countries which result in medical personnel offering their services while risking their own lives without any safety measures (gloves, masks). As a result, deaths amongst medical personnel have risen to extreme levels.

The World Federation of Trade Unions and its members worldwide have in the past, with two International Action Days, denounced the role of the Pharmaceutical Multinational Companies which profit from the people’s suffering.

State budget cuts in the funding of public institutions in the field of research, pharmaceutical production and healthcare in the USA and the European Union are aggravating the problems while working in favor of the privatization of those fields, the expansion of the control of the monopolies over the industry and against the satisfaction of the people’s needs.

It is very clear in the case of Ebola as well that as long as the research, the production and the healthcare are ruled by the laws of the monopoly competition and the profit, the people will be suffering from diseases that should have long been extinct or adequately controlled.

Furthermore, in complete contrast to the imperialist policy of the USA and Britain which in the midst of the crisis have ceased the opportunity to send new troops in Africa, the World Federation of Trade Unions feels the need to congratulate the heroic decision of the Cuban Government and the Cuban people to show in the most humanitarian way their solidarity to the people of Africa by sending in Liberia and Guinea a large group of doctors and medical personnel in order to assist in the efforts for the relief of the Ebola patients. As More than 50,000 Cuban doctors and medical personnel working in 66 countries around the world and specifically 4,000 in 32 African countries, are offering high level Health services as a form of practical solidarity.

We congratulate our affiliate the CTC Cuba and its members in the Health Sector who heroically prove their international solidarity.

The World Federation of Trade Unions representing 90 million workers in 126 countries reaffirms its consistent position that preventive healthcare on a framework of a public, free and adequate healthcare system is the best solution in all Health issues.

The WFTU struggles for:

• The creation of contemporary, adequate and fully equipped institutions of healthcare in all countries that will be part of a broad Public, Free and centrally designed healthcare system to offer to all the population proper healthcare services at all stages of their lives. The sufficient number of medical personnel, the satisfaction of the labour rights and the proper conditions of hygiene and safety are important factors.
• The formation of public institutions of research, production and distribution of free or cheap pharmaceutical supplies, medicine and vaccination to all the people.
• The eradication of illiteracy by securing the access for all people to a public and free Education.
• For state policy that will solve the housing problems in many countries.
• The elimination of poverty and hunger. The African Continent is rich in natural resources and agricultural capabilities. If those are put in the control and the service of the people would offer greatly in the rapid improvement of the living standards of the ordinary people and to the drastic elimination of the diseases and poverty. 
• THE SECRETARIAT
•  

Published time: October 15, 2014 18:40 Via http://rt.com/news/196268-five-things-know-ebola/ The UN’s health watchdog, the WHO, says there are 60 days left to contain the Ebola outbreak, which has already claimed almost 5,000 lives. This is what you need to know about the killer virus.

1. It has been here for decades

The virus lives naturally in animals, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. The first two recorded outbreak were in 1976. The Ebola virus (EBOV) is one of five members of the Ebolavirus genus, four of which cause lethal hemorrhagic fever. It was previously called Zaire virus, after the country that is now called the Democratic Republic of Congo. There are currently two separate Ebola outbreaks underway. In addition to the one in Western Africa, which has already spread to the US and Europe, there is another one in the Congo. Bats are the natural reservoir of the virus, because they can carry it without getting ill. Apes can suffer from it too. Humans may get infected by eating bushmeat or through feces, after which the virus can spread from human to human via blood, saliva and other fluids.

2. There is no cure

Ebola’s high mortality rate and gruesome symptoms have given it the air of something out of a horror movie. But statistically speaking, the virus was a minor threat, with outbreaks quickly fading out claiming a few hundred lives at most. So it’s not surprising that institutions researching infectious diseases never invested many resources into finding a cure, preferring to spend money on more wide-spread (and, cynically speaking, more profit-generating) threats. The exception to that are bioweapons specialists, who concluded that the virus that could not go airborne and is an ineffective means to attack the enemy (or serve as a weapon for terrorists, for that matter). So when the current outbreak started beating records – in fact killing more people than all previous outbreaks combined – and spreading into cities, nobody had a working treatment at hand. A handful of experimental vaccines are in the pipeline, including three developed in Russia. But they are far from being mass produced, while the virus is spreading.

3. No adequate response

The countries affected by the current outbreak are poor, their healthcare systems are rudimentary, and the tradition-dictated hygiene habits of many of its citizens are not suitable for stopping the infection. Where Western countries can rally experts in biohazard suits, quarantine every person a suspected carrier had contact with and run blood tests, countries like Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia have neither the resources nor experience to take such measures. And the problems only start with healthcare: the epidemic spreads panic, fear and violence, causing deterioration in whatever social order is in place. The assistance from international organizations helps a lot, but it’s not a magic wand that can stop the outbreak with a deft wave. Organizations like the WHO have their difficulties too. For instance, the UN’s health body had its budget cut, leaving it with less than $4 billion to spend in 2013-2014. In contrast, the budget of the US agency tackling infections, the CDC, was about $6 billion in 2013. Just like scientists researching treatments, doctors preventing them in the field have to prioritize. Ebola was not a priority, and the outbreak went under the radar for an estimated three months, before it was declared as such by Doctors Without Borders. By that time it was already in Guinea’s capital Conakry, a city of 2 million people.

4. The West is not prepared

Or at least not as well prepared as it should be! Even if Ebola manages to get into developed nations with some travelers slipping through airport cordons, the spread of the virus would not be large. It takes between four to 21 days for an infected person to become contagious, which means once a case is discovered, everyone who had contact with the person can be quarantined and tested before they can spread the disease. But being among the few unlucky victims is little consolation for those who do get infected. And the fact that in the US and Spain, health workers who provided care to known Ebola sufferers got infected, despite knowing what they were dealing with, is less than reassuring. In both countries there is criticism over how the treatment of Ebola patients is conducted and how reports of new suspected cases have been responded to.

5. Epidemic cost: Tens of billions of dollars

Battling the outbreak is difficult and costly. The WHO estimates that by November there could be 10,000 new cases of the disease each week in two months, unless it’s taken under control. This would require having 70 percent of infected people in a care facility and 70 percent of burials done without further infections. Otherwise the breakout would reach a stage, for which there is no plan. The World Bank says in the worst case scenario the economic damage from the epidemic could reach $33 billion. The US Department of Defense said it needs over $1 billion to cover the cost of the effort to fight the disease in Africa. It may send as many as 3,000 soldiers to the epidemic zone, with an estimated cost of $750 million over a six-month period. Other states, world bodies and charities have promised to chip in to stem the tide of the developing outbreak and provide aid to the most afflicted West African nations. In September, the European Union pledged 150 million euros to fight the virus in West Africa. The World Bank Group has pledged US $230 million in emergency funding to help Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone contain the spread of Ebola infections. Last month the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation released $50 million to the UN and other international aid agencies working to contain the epidemic. The International Committee of the Red Cross, in tandem with the Red Cross and Red Crescent societies, has set aside 34.7 million Swiss francs to tackle the epidemic as well. The price tag of developing and distributing drugs, however, is less than one would expect. Ripley Ballou, who heads the Ebola vaccine program for GSK, estimated the company could make 100,000 to 500,000 doses for just $25 million. The problem: it would take around 9 months. In any such epidemic, however, the real cost comes not from the cure, but treating the consequences of human fear, WHO director general Margaret Chan said. According to Chan, 90 percent of the economic costs incurred from any such outbreak “come from irrational and disorganized efforts of the public to avoid infection.”

Check out this link  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/10/04/in-the-medical-response-to-ebola-cuba-is-punching-far-above-its-weight/

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/self-det/ch06.htm

A long-awaited referendum on whether Scotland should become an independent country will be held on Sept. 18. The following statement on this issue was adopted in March 2014 by the Scottish Committee of the Communist Party of Britain.
People’s Voice, Sept. 16, 2014 www.peoplesvoice.ca

The Scottish Committee of the CPB defends the right of nations to selfdetermination and condemns the Coalition government for its threats of noncooperation.

If a majority of the Scottish people vote for independence in the 2014 referendum, then their decision should be respected. Our commitment to the right to selfdetermination is one of principle. At the same time, the Communist Party maintains its other principle of judging the exercise of that right in terms of the class interests of the Scottish people and of those of working people in Britain and internationally.

On this basis, Communists do not believe independence on the terms proposed is in the interests of working people today any more than it was in the 1970s. At that time Communists and the Left in the trade union led the way in the fight for a Scottish parliament with powers to intervene in the economy, to develop public ownership and increase labour’s power over capital  powers that would in turn strengthen the bargaining power of working people across Britain.

It is our conviction that independence as proposed in the White Paper would weaken such bargaining power and strengthen that of big business and of its state machine at both British and Scottish level. Membership of the sterling area would subordinate Scotland to current neoliberal policies without any power to change them  at the same time as seriously eroding the opportunity for united working class action across the nations of Britain to do so.

Worse still, membership of the EU would oblige Scotland to incorporate in any written constitution the terms of the 2012 Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance. This Treaty requires even tougher controls on government spending than the Stability and Growth Pact  with the same objective: using unemployment as the market regulator to curb the trade union movement.

While it is conceivable that some of the most reactionary aspects of the White Paper, such as NATO membership and reducing Corporation Tax, might be reversed as a result of subsequent political mobilisation by the Left, we judge it to be extremely unlikely that there would be a reversal of positions on Sterling and EU membership.

The transition to independence will take place at a time of diminishing oil revenues and unfavourable economic circumstances  allowing any Scottish government, and the big business controlled media, to call for fiscal “stability” in face of adverse market reactions. Leftwing supporters of independence need to think through the consequences. The socialist Left does not possess anything like mass support in Scotland today.

Election results show this. The inevitably rancorous negotiations over the division of resources will harden nationalist attitudes. Yet these years, 20152017, will be precisely when the terms of the new written Scottish Constitution will be determined and the SNP’s White Paper demonstrates a clear intent to do so on the terms set by big business and Scotland’s own finance capital sector.

This is why Communists oppose this White Paper on Independence. Instead we continue to call for radical federalism as the best way of developing class cohesion across the nations of Britain: national parliaments with powers of economic intervention, ownership and control and a federal parliament with overall powers over economic policy and a constitutional obligation to redistribute in terms of social need.

We believe that this provides the best framework for uniting working people on class terms against the state power of big business. Currently that power is concentrated at British level and represents above all the interests of the City of London.

Under a “White Paper” Scottish Constitution, big business will continue to exercise this power through its disproportionate ownership of the Scottish economy and the binding requirements of its instruments, the Bank of England and the EU Treaties.

A No vote in the referendum has to be made the springboard for remobilising the working class movement at British level to demand real constitutional change.

The fight for radical federalism, as outlined in Red Paper, must begin now. At the same time the fight for the objectives of the People’s Charter and the People’s Assembly, backed by the united trade union movement in England, Scotland and Wales, must be stepped up. Radical Federalism will only be won on the basis of class mobilisation across the nations of Britain.