UN: We Botched Response to the Ebola Outbreak
UN: We Botched Response to the Ebola Outbreak – In a draft document, the World Health Organization (WHO) has acknowledged that it botched attempts to stop the now-spiraling Ebola outbreak in West Africa, blaming factors including incompetent staff and a lack of information.
WHO is the U.N.’s specialized health agency, responsible for setting global health standards and coordinating the global response to disease outbreaks. In the document obtained by The Associated Press, the agency wrote that experts should have realized that traditional infectious disease containment methods wouldn’t work in a region with porous borders and broken health systems. The United Nations’ health agency acknowledged that, at times, even its own bureaucracy was a problem.
Dr. Peter Piot, the co-discoverer of the Ebola virus, agreed in an interview Friday that WHO acted far too slowly, largely because of its Africa office. Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, also questioned why it took WHO five months and 1,000 deaths before the agency declared Ebola an international health emergency in August. But he said WHO might have been scarred by its experience during the 2009 swine flu pandemic, when it was slammed for hyping the situation.
Others say that it’s not just the WHO, but the whole world has dropped the ball, when it comes to responding to Ebola.
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