The World Health Organization (WHO) has issued a statement saying they “could not cope” with the Ebola outbreak, and their response was “slow and insufficient.” The organization promised reforms to deal with such outbreaks in the future.
“We have learned
lessons of humility. We have seen that old diseases in new
contexts consistently spring new surprises,” the statement
said.
“We have taken serious note of the criticisms of the
organization that the initial WHO response was slow and
insufficient, we were not aggressive in alerting the world,”
the document added.
The statement also focused on the fact that the organization
“didn’t work effectively in coordination with partners,” and
there were issues with risk communication, and with the
distribution of roles and responsibilities.
“We can mount a highly effective response to small and
medium-sized outbreaks, but when faced with an emergency of this
scale, our current systems – national and international – simply
have not coped.”
The document, dated April 16, wasn’t clear about its publication
date, and it wasn’t sent in email alerts or posted on Twitter.
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In addition to admitting the failures, the WHO made a list of
eight lessons learnt, mentioning in which areas their response
should have been better.
Those include, for instance, capacity in the face of a
large-scale crisis, communication, and sharing resources and
information.
The WHO also pledged reforms to deal with a disaster of such
scale in the future.
“We will develop the capacity to respond rapidly and
effectively to disease outbreaks and humanitarian emergencies. We
commit to expanding our core staff working on diseases with
outbreak potential and health emergencies so we will have at
least [1,000] skilled staff always available at the three levels
of WHO,” the organization stated.
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An additional 1,000 staff should be hired as a reserve force,
plus the WHO plans to have a contingency fund.
Also, they promised to put in place a stronger command structure,
and more robust international health rules to ensure each country
is ready for a crisis of a scale similar to the Ebola outbreak.
The WHO has been frequently criticized over its response to the
epidemic, first of all, for its reluctance to declare the
disaster an emergency, letting it grow into the worst Ebola
crisis ever, with 10,000 deaths and over 25,000 cases.
The hardest-hit were the West African countries of: Guinea,
Liberia and Sierra Leone, with the majority of cases being
reported there.
However, other parts of the world were affected, including the US
and Europe.
The outbreak began in March 2014, and researchers from the New
England Journal of Medicine traced it to a two-year-old toddler
who died in southeastern Guinea in December 2013.