WHO ‘needs urgent change’ to tackle health crises

The World Health Organization (WHO) is unprepared to deal with crises like the Ebola outbreak and requires fundamental change, supported by an increase in funding, experts warned Tuesday. More than 11,000 people have died from the highly infectious Ebola virus in the past 18 months, most of them in the west African countries of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, where it continues to claim lives. In a critical report, a UN-appointed panel of independent experts said the WHO was too slow in declaring a global public health emergency on August 8, 2014, five months after the outbreak had taken hold.

The panel is convinced that WHO must make fundamental changes, particularly in terms of leadership and decision-making processes, in order to deliver on this mandate.

The report concluded

In the early months of the crisis, Director-General Margaret Chan and senior staff also failed to show the “independent and courageous decision-making” required to deal with governments of the countries affected, it said. The panel also criticised the WHO’s early engagement with local communities about what could be done to reduce the spread of Ebola, and its failure to provide authoritative information on what was happening. In Guinea, it said, communities are still not convinced of their own responsibilities with regard to declaring contact with infected patients and ensuring victims are safely buried, making it difficult to eliminate the virus.

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