While man’s ability to treat disease is better than ever before, the Ebola epidemic serves as a reminder that as international travel gets easier, the risk of similar outbreaks increases

The global health system is unable to handle another mass epidemic like the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said, urging wealthy nations to develop coordinated response plans and drugs to fight neglected diseases.

Late and slow international response, the absence of solid leadership, as well as the lack of treatments and vaccines, are a recurrent scenario in many of today’s health emergencies and are not unique to the Ebola epidemic, the medical charity said.

“If a global pandemic were to strike tomorrow, there is still no well-resourced, coordinated international response in place to kick in,” Joanne Liu, the international president of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), said in a statement.

The Ebola epidemic was detected in Guinea more than a year ago, and spread to Liberia and Sierra Leone, killing more than 11,000 people.

While Liberia was recently declared Ebola-free, a spike in new cases in Guinea has stoked concerns the virus could spread again.

Millions of people suffer from diseases for which there are no effective drugs or vaccines

To avert the risk of losing thousands more lives to a new health emergency, Liu urged the leaders of an upcoming G7 meeting to take action to close the “gaping hole in our global health system”.

World leaders from Germany, the US, Britain, France, Canada, Italy and Japan will meet in Germany next week, and are expected to discuss Ebola and neglected diseases, among other issues, MSF said. It said too little funding goes into the development of new drugs and vaccines for neglected diseases, or those that have proven resistant to available treatments.

A health worker standing with a woman grieving a relative who died of Ebola in Suakoko, Liberia. Photo: James Giahyue/Reuters

Moreover, many of these medicines are priced out of reach, the charity said.

“Millions of people suffer from diseases for which there are no effective drugs or vaccines, because they don’t represent a lucrative market for the pharmaceutical industry,” said MSF’s Philipp Frisch. Drug-resistant tubercolosis (TB) is one of the health emergencies for which new drugs, vaccines and diagnostics are urgently needed, according to MSF.

The organisation said it treats thousands of people each year for drug-resistant TB while managing to cure only one in two, and some forms of the disease are no longer treatable due to resistance to existing drugs.

“Wealthy, developed countries must take urgent action against the market failure in the pharmaceutical research and development,” Frisch said.