TONY Blair’s 2001 military intervention in Sierra Leone did little to prevent its citizens disrupting the diamond trading floors of Europe, Israel and New York.

Ten thousand foreign troops, now stabilising its labour relations, are doubtless designed to remedy that failing; they will certainly do nothing to end Sierra Leone’s enduring poverty, which guarantees its infants the lowest life expectancy on earth.

Since the present, carefully-constructed “Ebola crisis” began, Malaria (much easier to eradicate) has killed 35 times more of its citizens. Aids has killed 40 times more, and basic malnutrition has doubled the death rate for each. But Ebola is the vehicle chosen to continue the 500-year-old decimation of the region and so the media bandwagon latches on to it.

Sierra Leone should be the richest nation on earth. From slaves through to diamonds, it has surrendered its wealth to the most disgusting life forms on the planet.

Its environment is decimated, its rivers poisoned, its mountains pulverised – for a western culture that cares nothing for people suffering from such abject poverty. Hopefully, the price of or profits from diamonds will be reflected by the West’s “charity”.

Roger Westmoreland, The Oval, Pocklington.