Since we’re in a de facto period of positioning for the coming General Election in May, 2015, I hope you will allow me to respond to Oliver Letwin’s column in the Bridport and Lyme Regis News.

Mr Letwin writes of the seriousness and unexpected nature of the Ebola virus. Elsewhere in the paper we read of cuts in mental health provision in Bridport and Lyme Regis.

The two issues are both connected and Mr Letwin has no reason to be so surprised by the mounting scale of the Ebola threat.

Both problems are sad illustrations of what happens when health-related services are run for profit, rather than for people themselves.

There was no value in commercially-driven drug companies developing a vaccine for poor countries such as Guinea or Sierra Leone, because there are fewer profits to be had than in rich countries’ diseases, or even in such vanity preoccupations as combating baldness.

Successive governments have argued that private provision can coexist with a service free at the point of delivery.

What we’re seeing with the current reorganisation of local services under the present government is that privatisation means that there is no delivery of some important services at all, free or otherwise.

The lack of an adequate pharmaceutical response to Ebola in West Africa is for the same reason as the inadequate mental health care provision in West Dorset.

We’ve allowed accountants and business planners to replace compassion and thoughtfulness when supposedly caring for those who are ill or distressed.

Perhaps it’s time for each of us to wake up and reverse this trend, including and especially our politicians.

Neil Ramsden

Bradpole