AlHijjah 7, 1435, Oct 1, 2014, SPA -- The battle against the Ebola epidemic in West Africa has revealed the issue of inequality, as people in poor countries have less access to knowledge and infrastructure for treating the sick and containing the deadly virus, the president of the World Bank said Wednesday. Three poor countries in West Africa—Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea—have seen their healthcare systems overwhelmed by the worst outbreak of the disease on record. The epidemic has killed more than 3,000 people in the region. "Now, thousands of people in these [three] countries are dying because, in the lottery of birth, they were born in the wrong place," Jim Yong Kim said at Howard University in Washington. "This ... shows the deadly cost of unequal access to basic services and the consequences of our failure to fix this issue." Kim, the first public-health expert to lead the World Bank, said the development institution was committed to addressing income inequality as well as the inequality of access to food, clean water, and healthcare. The World Bank so far has devoted $400 million to fight the spread of Ebola and improve healthcare systems in West Africa.
