UN/WHO: We Botched Response to the Ebola Outbreak

[Gert van der Hoek]

UN: We Botched Response to the Ebola Outbreak

LONDON ? Oct 17, 2014

In a draft document, the World Health Organization 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.

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.

"Nearly everyone involved in the outbreak response failed to see some fairly plain writing on the wall," WHO said in the document. "A perfect storm was brewing, ready to burst open in full force."

The U.N. 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.

WHO is the U.N.'s specialized health agency, responsible for setting global health standards and coordinating the global response to disease outbreaks.

The document ? a timeline on the Ebola outbreak ? was not issued publicly but the AP was told the health agency would be releasing it earlier this week. However, WHO officials said in an email Friday that the timeline would now probably not be released publicly. No official at the agency would comment Friday on the draft report.

Read more: ABC News

 

[Emily]

Re: UN/WHO: We Botched Response to the Ebola Outbreak

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/17/world-health-organisation-botched-ebola-outbreak

World Health Organisation admits botching response to Ebola outbreak

UN health agency acknowledged ?nearly everyone involved in the response failed to see some fairly plain writing on the wall?

Sarah Boseley, Health editor
The Guardian, Friday 17 October 2014 10.49 EDT

...

WHO?s appointment system in Africa is also criticised in the document. 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, it said. As Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine told the Guardian last week: ?What should be [the] WHO?s strongest regional office because of the enormity of the health challenges, is actually the weakest technically, and full of political appointees.?..

See also:

Ebola virus is in Guinea since 1982, according to a doctor

 

[sharon sanders]

Re: UN/WHO: We Botched Response to the Ebola Outbreak

I have never seen this kind of press release before....


From: WorldHealthOrganizationNews@who.int
To: undisclosed-recipients@null, null@null
Subject: WHO Response to Internal Ebola document leaked to media
Date: Oct 18, 2014 8:11 AM

WHO response to Internal Ebola document leaked to media

A WHO internal document recently obtained by some media outlets was the first draft of a small team documenting the chronology of the Ebola outbreak events for future review. This document has not yet been fact-checked or reviewed by WHO staff involved in the initial response to Ebola, and is part of an on-going analysis of our response.

WHO will not do interviews or explain details on this document until it is completed. WHO believes in transparency and accountability and will release this review when it is fact-checked. For now, WHO's focus is to obtain the resources needed to successfully fight this Ebola outbreak.

A full review and analysis of global responses to this, the largest-ever Ebola outbreak in history, will be completed and made public once the outbreak is under control. We are a public health organization and our focus right now must be to stop this outbreak and save lives. We cannot divert our limited resources from the urgent response to do a detailed analysis of the past response. That review will come, but only after this outbreak is over.

 

[gsgs]

Re: UN/WHO: We Botched Response to the Ebola Outbreak

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/statements/2014/ebola_document_leak/en/
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...itial-handling-of-ebola-outbreak-9803436.html

> We cannot divert our limited resources from the urgent response to do a detailed analysis
> of the past response. That review will come, but only after this outbreak is over.

it might be useful to improve the response in this very outbreak
involve the other thinkers and agencies to help in the detailed analysis and to learn from it

drafts are just fine ... you can still correct later



[to botch = verpfuschen]

 

[Sollydog]

Re: UN/WHO: We Botched Response to the Ebola Outbreak

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/statements/2014/ebola_document_leak/en/
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...itial-handling-of-ebola-outbreak-9803436.html

> We cannot divert our limited resources from the urgent response to do a detailed analysis
> of the past response. That review will come, but only after this outbreak is over.

it might be useful to improve the response in this very outbreak
involve the other thinkers and agencies to help in the detailed analysis and to learn from it

drafts are just fine ... you can still correct later

I think that you are right that it might be helpful to include others in figuring out the how and why of it but there is one thing that I do not think they should wait to do and that is to apologize to all of humanity in general and perhaps to MSF in particular since they chose to ignore what MSF was telling them.

I hope that the report will do some good and not just be a useless exercise in finger pointing and scape-goating.

 

[Pathfinder]

Re: UN/WHO: We Botched Response to the Ebola Outbreak

The Canadian Press - ONLINE EDITION

Park the Ebola blame, MFS president urges, saying it detracts from critical work

By: Helen Branswell, The Canadian Press
Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2014 at 5:49 PM

TORONTO - The international president of Medecins Sans Frontieres says it's time to move on from the process of blame-laying for the globe's disastrously slow response to the West African Ebola outbreak.

Montrealer Dr. Joanne Liu said the world should be focused on fixing the problem, rather than figuring out who is at fault for the fact that the global community failed to grasp how bad this outbreak would become.

"I think that we need to move away from finding a scapegoat for the fact that we got where we are, because there's a lot of attention towards (that) and I don't think it's constructive attention," Liu said in an interview from MSF's Geneva headquarters.

"I think that where we have to focus our attention today is bringing an answer to West Africa, to contain the epidemic in the highly infected countries and to prevent repeating that history in the neighbouring countries and increasing the emergency preparedness (in the region)."

more...

http://www.brandonsun.com/national/...racts-from-critical-work-279977922.html?thx=y

 

[Pathfinder]

Re: UN/WHO: We Botched Response to the Ebola Outbreak

After botching Ebola, WHO to pick new Africa boss

BY MARIA CHENG
The Associated Press
Published: 03 November 2014 07:50 PM
Updated: 03 November 2014 07:54 PM

LONDON -- After acknowledging that it bungled the response to the biggest Ebola outbreak in history, the World Health Organization is electing a new regional director for its Africa office this week. Critics say it's about time.

WHO Africa is widely acknowledged to be the U.N. health agency's weakest regional office. In an internal draft document obtained by the Associated Press last month, WHO blamed its staff in Africa for initially botching the response to Ebola, describing many of its regional staff as "politically-motivated appointments" and noted numerous complaints about WHO officials in West Africa.
...
There are five candidates jostling to be the new Africa director: Jean-Marie Okwo-Bele, a Congolese doctor in charge of the vaccination program at WHO Geneva, Mali's Dr. Fatoumata Nafo Traore, director of the Roll Back Malaria partnership, Dorothee Akoko Kinde-Gazard, Benin's health minister, Therese N'Dri Yoman of Cote d'Ivoire, a past health minister, and Dr. Matshidiso Moeti of Botswana, who previously ran the country's epidemiology department.

In a report on lessons learned from Ebola released ahead of this week's meeting, the WHO Africa office said the explosive spread of the lethal virus was due to issues including poor awareness and badly trained health workers.
It didn't mention several problems detailed in the internal WHO document written in Geneva, which observed that WHO staff in Africa refused to help get visas for outbreak experts to fly to Guinea and were compromising Ebola containment efforts.

Lee said WHO headquarters in Geneva should have jumped in sooner to seize control of Ebola from its Africa office, but that agency politics likely complicated that.

"There were enough voices raising the alarm outside of WHO to suggest that something exceptional was going on," she said. "Serious questions need to be asked within WHO Geneva about why these other sources were ignored for so long."
...
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/loca...otching-ebola-who-to-pick-new-africa-boss.ece

 

[Pathfinder]

Emails reveal WHO delayed declaring Ebola emergency due to political considerations

Published March 20, 2015
Associated Press

GENEVA – By early June of last year, the Ebola epidemic centered on Guinea was the deadliest ever recorded. Foreign workers were being evacuated. Top disease-fighters warned that the virus could soon spread across West Africa.

But the World Health Organization resisted sounding the alarm until August, partly for political reasons, despite the fact that senior staff in Africa proposed doing so in June, The Associated Press has found. The two-month delay, some argue, may have cost lives...

WHO has acknowledged acting too slowly to control the Ebola epidemic. In its defense, the agency says the virus's spread was unprecedented and blames several factors, including lack of resources and intelligence from the field.Internal documents obtained by AP, however, show WHO's top leaders were informed of how dire the situation was. But they held off on declaring an emergency in part because it could have angered the countries involved, interfered with their mining interests or restricted the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca in October.

Declaring an emergency was "a last resort," Dr. Sylvie Briand, who runs WHO's pandemic and epidemic diseases department, said in a June 5 email to a colleague who floated the idea. "It may be more efficient to use other diplomatic means for now."

Five days after Briand's email, WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan was sent a memo that warned cases might soon appear in Mali, Ivory Coast and Guinea Bissau. But it went on to say that declaring an international emergency or even convening a committee to discuss it "could be seen as a hostile act."

More...


http://www.foxnews.com/health/2015/0...-to-political/