Cure or Cause? How colonialism has shaped response to Ebola outbreaks in Western Africa

In the wake of yet another deadly outbreak of Ebola virus throughout Central Africa, with roughly 2,500 cases and 1,000 confirmed deaths, the systematic failures of much modern African infrastructure are clear.

Since 1976, when the virus was first discovered, there have been approximately twenty-five outbreaks of Ebola, with fatality rates ranging from 25%, to as high as 90%, however, Western Africa’s 2014 to 2016 outbreak took more lives than all its other epidemics combined and has yet to be topped. That begs the question: why exactly was this outbreak so incredibly deadly? Was it the virus itself, or was it the historical failings of colonising powers which left these countries so helpless in the face of disease? 

Firstly, Ebola was a complete shock to Western Africa’s systems, since the disease had almost exclusively cropped up in Central Africa previously. Countries like Liberia and Sierra Leone therefore had little experience with the virus and thus were able to do little to stop it before it was already too late. That being said however, it is impossible to purely blame Ebola’s exoticism for the crisis it caused. Rather, the crumbling healthcare systems abandoned by American and British colonisers are to blame. 

Sierra Leone’s Bunce Island was once a hub for human trafficking at the height of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, and though Britain would eventually use the colony as the headquarters for its abolitionist movement against slavery, the country still bears the legacy of slavery through the infrastructure and racial hierarchies influenced by white supremacy. To their credit, the British in Sierra Leone did implement a strong medical system before the country gained its independence in 1961, with the blame for its failures mostly falling on the corruption of post-independence governments, however, the very foundations of this system were far from perfect. Since the British built and organised their healthcare infrastructure around the basis of white supremacy, wherein ‘Natives’ were treated as second-class citizens and seen as unsanitary carriers of disease, while the settlers were afforded significantly better healthcare, especially when it came to deadly outbreaks. Plans to drain swampland to reduce the spread of disease carrying mosquitos, which would have benefited everyone, were shut down in favour of a ‘sanitary segregation’ system, which instead perpetrated racial separation whilst barring Africansfrom their own country’s medical facilities.

By the 1980s, Sierra Leone had experienced a post-independence boom of medical schools with hopes of forming a universal health care system. Due to this upsurge in qualified doctors and nurses coinciding with the rapid rise in interest rates under the Volcker Shock, many western nations like the United Kingdom, United States, and Canada began making offers, incentivising them to leave Africa and enter western healthcare systems. Understandably, many took the offers of increased pay and better equipment, ultimately leaving African health systems lacking the necessary people to manage them, whilst heavily benefitting those of the European settlers of old.  

Overall, the Western settlers used Sierra Leone to fit their needs at the time, abused its indigenous population, and intentionally left them underdeveloped. This resulted in significant pressures upon infrastructure and social-political spheres, creating vulnerability to civil wars and political instability, and even more so to mass disasters like the outbreak of a foreign, fast-spreading, and deadly disease.

To bring us back to the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak, it is easy to understand why these countries were so overwhelmed. Suffering from a legacy of racism, their healthcare systems were overburdened and unequipped.

In the name of humanitarian aid, Britain stepped in to help their ex-colony manage the outbreak, sending volunteer responders and pledging £230 million. However, this charity too was haunted by Sierra Leone’s history of colonialism. As before, white doctors were viewed as more knowledgeable and better prepared to deal with such a crisis when compared to the African doctors who had actual lived experience of treating Ebola. Markedly, London hosted a meeting of doctors and other speakers to try to come up with a plan to stop the outbreak, though notably the vast majority of speakers were white Europeans, as opposed to Africans themselves. Where European doctors and epidemiologists were specifically recruited to go and face the disease, doctors from the DRC who had personally worked on other outbreaks were disallowed from recruitment due to issues regarding visas and repatriation, arguably limiting the overall effectiveness of the effort. Additionally, first responders were working on the outbreak reported there to have been clear racial and ethnic barriers between the treatment of Sierra Leonean and European patients, with Europeans being treated separately. It doesn’t take a genius to recognise the clear pattern of ethnic and racial discrimination within the responses to outbreaks here, both in terms of care on the front lines and respect on the international stage.

In conclusion, it is clear that the devastating scale and impact of the Ebola outbreak in Western Africa was heavily shaped by the impacts and legacies of the region’s colonial past. Due to the role of Western settlers in the creation of segregated social hierarchies, countries like Sierra Leone were powerless against an alien threat like Ebola. Racism and the systematic underdevelopment of important societal infrastructures ultimately had the largest impact on Africa’s response to Ebola, with colonial legacies continuing to haunt and affect all aspects of these societies with dire consequences.

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