A different and better way to look at it is the lack of prioritisation of health service provision by governments, not only in the West African region but also in most parts of the continent. Add to this the lack of academic freedom and over reliance on foreign medical knowledge production systems, inventions and technology. Moreover, our models of health service provision – because of our wholesale adoption of privatisation and neo-liberal frameworks – have now become the preserve of those in upper echelons of society. Thus a government can quarantine those in poor, crowded places, as has been done in Liberia. So when arguments are raised about how the economic impact of the current epidemic relates to the loss of markets, these ironically miss the essential point that it is because of lack of public health services to poor communities and regions that it has spun out of control. The biggest indictment for our continental failure to manage the current outbreak in a much more concerted and holistic way falls squarely on the shoulders of Africa’s political and business leadership. The political leaders have remained more interested in personal aggrandizement and pandering to de-contextualised economic development models than they have been in the people. The business leaders for their part have taken advantage of these proclivities of the political leaders, joining the comprador bourgeoisie and mimicking with little contextual production or social democratic intent the practices of transnational companies. With this approach by business and the scramble for either a cure or a vaccine, what we are faced with are the ominous prospects of disaster capitalism, where instead of rectifying the actual problem of lack of health service provision, the outbreak will be used to fortify elitist privatised healthcare.