PERSPECTIVE| FES SENEGAL Strategies for Combating Ebola? Comprehensive development needed! ANNETTE LOHMANN November 2014 n The Ebola crisis is exposing structural deficits in development that go far beyond a health crisis: the health crisis is threatening to become a food crisis as well as an economic and social crisis. All this shows that infectious diseases are inseparably interwoven with fundamental issues relating to political, social and economic de­velopment as well as properly functioning statehood. Not Ebola is the fundamental problem, but rather deficits in development, brutally exposed by the disease and which in turn are massively reinforcing the impact of Ebola. n Developing countries and the international(donor) community must tackle struc­tural problems early on in a resolute and determined manner. Only if sustainable, inclusive health-care systems can be established providing at least basic security for everyone, the state assumes the role of providing public goods and reasonable, socially just distributed economic growth is achieved can shocks such as the one caused by the outbreak of Ebola in West Africa be significantly mitigated – and be­come less of a global threat. n It is not enough to focus on a few(rather more developed) countries in sub-Saharan Africa, as this fails to realise that development in less internationally salient countries is also in the direct interest of the international community.