Like HIV, ebola started among poor African people

Helen Rees, Executive Director of the Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Institute of the University of the Witwatersrand: "Ebola started among poor African people in four pour African countries. It was only when [the number of] deaths started to be bigger and the world became insecure that the world mobilised a response.

There were vaccines and medicines sitting on shelves and not being progressed because it was a disease of poor people in poor countries. That is exactly what happened with HIV. [With ebola], it is being squeezed into a couple of months.

Now we are seeing fear and panic across the world - and we are getting stigma as a result. In Liberia, a community of men who have sex with men are being blamed for ebola by a particular Catholic bishop. Politicians are making hostile decisions with regard to quarantine."