Ebola resurgence and healthcare violence expose systemic failures in global health security and conflict response (AP News)
Original framing: “The rare Ebola outbreak is one danger. Attacks on healthcare workers are another - AP News” — AP News (via Google News)
Ebola outbreaks are not 'rare' but recurring symptoms of a health system designed during colonialism to extract labor and resources, with post-colonial states inheriting fragmented, underfunded infrastructures. The 1976 Yambuku outbreak occurred in a region where Belgian colonial health posts had been repurposed for surveillance, a pattern repeated in later outbreaks. Structural adjustment programs in the 1980s-90s dismantled public health systems in favor of privatized, fee-for-service models, creating the conditions for outbreaks to spread unchecked.
The Ebola outbreak and attacks on healthcare workers are not isolated crises but manifestations of a global health system designed to extract value from the Global South while offering Band-Aid solutions.
Colonial-era infrastructures, repurposed for surveillance and control, persist in neocolonial patterns where Northern institutions dictate responses without accountability, while structural adjustment policies and debt burdens dismantle local health systems. Indigenous knowledge systems—long dismissed as 'unscientific'—offer proven frameworks for containment and healing, yet are excluded in favor of militarized, reactive measures. The solution lies in decolonizing health governance, integrating indigenous epistemologies, and addressing root causes: deforestation, debt, and the securitization of care. Actors like the Africa CDC, regional indigenous councils, and feminist health networks must lead this transformation, with funding redirected from extractive institutions to community-led systems. The irony is stark: the same institutions that frame Ebola as a 'rare' threat are the ones that manufacture its recurrence through policies of neglect and exploitation.