UN admits major mistakes in Ebola response as West Africa death toll rises

The World Health Organisation has admitted it botched attempts to halt the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. The UN health agency concedes it should have realised that traditional containment methods would not work in a region with porous borders and broken health systems. The worst-hit countries have been Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, where Ebola has killed 4,546 since the outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever began there in March, according to a report on Friday from the World Health Organization. That marked a sharp increase from late July, when fewer than 730 people had died from the disease in West Africa. The World Food Program said food prices in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone had risen by an average of 24 percent, forcing some families to cut back to just one meal a day.

People who had been our friends and whom we had shared palm wine with no longer wanted to be with us. Even when I showed the community elders my Ebola-free certificate, they just shook their heads.

Senessieh Momoh, Sierra Leone taxi driver, at meeting organised by state authorities, UNICEF and US CDC.

Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama appointed former White House adviser Ron Klain as his Ebola “czar” on Friday to help combat the disease in America and West Africa. Amid growing concerns about the spread of the virus in the United States, authorities said a Texas health worker, who was not ill but may have had contact with specimens from an Ebola patient, was quarantined on a cruise ship that departed last Sunday from the port of Galveston, Texas.

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