WHO admits it botched response to Ebola outbreak in West Africa
Print Edition
THE World Health Organization has admitted that it botched attempts to stop the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, blaming factors including incompetent staff and a lack of information.
“Nearly everyone involved in the outbreak response failed to see some fairly plain writing on the wall,” WHO said in a draft internal document, noting that experts should have realized traditional containment methods wouldn’t work in a region with porous borders and broken health systems.
The UN health agency acknowledged that, at times, even its own bureaucracy was a problem. It noted that the heads of WHO country offices in Africa are “politically motivated appointments” made by the WHO regional director for Africa, Dr Luis Sambo, who does not answer to the agency’s chief in Geneva, Dr Margaret Chan.
Dr Peter Piot, co-discoverer of the Ebola virus, said WHO acted far too slowly, largely because of its Africa office.
“It’s the regional office in Africa that’s the frontline,” he said. “And they didn’t do anything. That office is really not competent.”
Piot also questioned why it took WHO five months and 1,000 deaths before the agency declared Ebola an international health emergency in August.
“I called for a state of emergency to be declared in July and for military operations to be deployed,” he said.
In late April, during a conference on Ebola among infectious disease experts, questions were apparently raised about the performance of WHO experts, as not all of them bothered to send Ebola reports to WHO headquarters.
WHO said it was “particularly alarming” that the head of its Guinea office refused to help get visas for an expert team to come in and US$500,000 in aid was blocked by administrative hurdles. Guinea, along with Sierra Leone and Liberia, is one of the hardest-hit nations in the current outbreak, with 843 deaths so far.
The Ebola outbreak has already killed 4,484 people in West Africa and WHO has said that within two months there could be 10,000 new cases of Ebola every week.
When Doctors Without Borders began warning in April that Ebola was out of control, a dispute broke out between the charity and a WHO spokesman, who insisted it was under control.
At a meeting in June, Dr Bruce Aylward alerted Chan about the serious concerns being raised about WHO’s leadership in West Africa.
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