The IMF Worsened The African Ebola Crisis

On the one hand, the IMF imposed a series of economic reforms that drained the financial capacity of the countries most affected by Ebola. In exchange for liquidity, the priority was to spend the money to pay the foreign debt of the state and provide money to the coffers of the state, which more often than not means that foreign aid goes into the bank accounts of national and foreign elite members.

“These policies have been extremely strict, absorbing funds that could have been designed to meet the health challenges,” write the experts. Although the IMF softened its demands with a parallel program of aid for social investment and reduce extreme poverty, most of the items have not been implemented.

According to the documentation, the IMF’s program, that has studied so-called priority spending, and that has outlined about thirty social improvement targets, only accomplished about a third of the goals listed.

“In 2013, just before the outbreak of Ebola, the three countries had met the economic policies of the IMF, but none had succeeded in raising social spending despite the health situation being urgent,” explains Lawrence King, also a professor of Cambridge.

Another measure that has come to leave these societies defenseless against an attack from diseases like Ebola, has been the limitation of the public budget and thinning of the public sector to meet the expenditure ceiling demanded by the IMF.

These policies have not only led to the three countries not hire medical staff and deploy adequate infrastructure at health centers, but all three nations have seen many of their doctors leave their countries prior to the Ebola outbreak.

In Sierra Leone, the most affected country, the number of health workers went from 0.11 per 1,000 inhabitants in 2004 to just 0.02 per 1,000 just four years later, according to WHO. Before that, during the mid 1990s, the IMF imposed on the authorities of that country a reduction of public employment of 28% and limits in spending on public wages were lengthened until the last decade.

However, two months ago, at the height of the crisis, the IMF pledged to allocate 350 million euros to fight the epidemic in West Africa and its director, Christine Lagarde, said it was good to “increase the fiscal deficit when it came to heal people … The IMF does not say this very often.”

To Kentikelenis, “the recent change in IMF criteria in prioritizing public health over fiscal discipline is welcome, but it is not the first time we hear this kind of rhetoric of the leadership of the IMF. It remains to be seen whether this time it will be different“.

Luis R. Miranda is the Founder and Editor of The Real Agenda. His 16 years of experience in Journalism include television, radio, print and Internet news. Luis obtained his Journalism degree from Universidad Latina de Costa Rica, where he graduated in Mass Media Communication in 1998. He also holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Broadcasting from Montclair State University in New Jersey. Among his most distinguished interviews are: Costa Rican President Jose Maria Figueres and James Hansen from NASA Space Goddard Institute. Read more about Luis.