The West African Ebola Epidemic is “a crisis for international peace and security” that is “unquestionably the most severe acute public health emergency in modern times”, according to UN World Health Organization (WHO) Director-general Dr. Margaret Chan.

“I have never seen a health event threaten the very survival of societies and governments in already very poor countries,” she said in a statement delivered on her behalf by Dr. Ian Smith to a conference in Manila, Philippines.  “I have never seen an infectious disease contribute so strongly to potential state failure.”

As of last weekend, Ebola’s death toll is more than 4,033 lives lost, all but a handful of them in West Africa, and half of those in Liberia.  Dr. Chan declined to update the number in her statement, because the numbers are rising “exponentially”.

Chan also blasted the profit-driven pharmaceutical industry, which only now appears to be on the verge of effective remedies and vaccines against Ebola.  This is despite Ebola being around for at least 40 years, but in poor and isolated African nations that could not pay for innovative and necessary treatments. It shows “the dangers of the world’s growing social and economic inequalities.”

“The rich get the best care,” she said. “The poor are left to die.”

Chan says the current Ebola crisis led her to three main conclusions:

Shocks brought by rampant disease, armed conflicts, or even severe weather events caused by accelerating climate change could “bring a fragile country to its knees.”

“Rumors and panic are spreading faster than the virus, and this costs money.”  The World Bank estimates that 90 percent of the economic costs of any outbreak “come from irrational and disorganized efforts of the public to avoid infection.”

And from the developed world’s lethargic reaction in spring to the current panic and fumbled cases in Texas and Spain, it shows “the world is ill-prepared to respond to any severe, sustained and threatening public health emergency.”