WHO accepts criticism of its Ebola reaction
Print Edition
THE World Health Organization’s chief admitted yesterday that the UN agency had been caught napping on Ebola, saying it should serve as a lesson to avoid similar mistakes in future.
Opening a rare emergency session to review the fight against the epidemic, WHO head Margaret Chan said despite turning the corner there was no room for complacency, warning that progress could very easily be undone.
Chan acknowledged blistering criticism that the WHO’s response to the epidemic had been slow and shoddy.
“This was West Africa’s first experience with the virus and it delivered some horrific shocks and surprises. The world, including WHO, was too slow to see what was unfolding before us,” she told delegates.
“Ebola is a tragedy that has taught the world, including WHO, many lessons also about how to prevent similar events in the future,” she said.
“The volatile microbial world will always deliver surprises,” she said. “Never again should the world be caught by surprise, unprepared.”
Chan told reporters that “the priority in 2015 is to help countries get the Ebola rate down to zero.”
The worst outbreak of the virus in history has seen nearly 9,000 deaths in a year — almost all in the three West African countries of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone — and sparked a major health scare worldwide.
Call for contingency fund
But “an upsurge in new cases can follow a single unsafe act or burial or violent act of community resistance,” Chan said.
She called for a “dedicated contingency fund to support rapid responses to outbreaks and emergencies,” the need to enhance crisis management in the heart of the WHO, better international coordination and surveillance, and a “far more rigorous methodology for evaluating these capacities.”
“Countries must be supported to have their own workforce for responding to emergencies, trained and drilled to perform with military precision,” she said.
David Nabarro, the UN’s Ebola coordinator, said “responses must be strategic, strong and speedy” in the future.
He said the outbreak showed up “weaknesses in the global institutional machinery for identifying and quickly neutralizing health hazards.”
However, Nabarro noted a string of generous contributions in funds, expertise and help in building up the creaky health infrastructure of the worst-hit countries, singling out China, Britain, France, the United States as well as the African Union and the West African regional bloc ECOWAS.
The conference also heard from Sierra Leonean nurse Rebecca Johnson, who survived the disease after a four-week treatment in December.
“Ebola is not the end of the world. Ebola can be beaten,” she said.
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