Months ago, while Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors without Borders (MSF) was up to their elbows in the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak in West Africa and were shouting from the rooftops: “THIS IS OUT OF CONTROL!”, international and national health agencies didn’t heed their cries.
Now we learn that the United Nation’s health agency, World Health Organization (WHO) has admitted it’s failures in a document obtained by the Associated Press.
“Nearly everyone involved in the outbreak response failed to see some fairly plain writing on the wall,” the WHO said in the document pointing fingers at incompetent staff and a lack of information.
The document was to be officially published earlier; however, officials now say it will likely not be published.
Dr. Peter Piot, a professor of global health and director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and co-discoverer of the Ebola virus 4 decades ago blamed the “avoidable” and worsening of the outbreak on a sluggish global response, “I never imagined the Ebola outbreak could evolve into such a big epidemic and, actually, a humanitarian crisis. I called for a state of emergency to be declared in July and for military operations to be deployed.”
This comes as the latest numbers from the aforementioned WHO shows the number of cases in West Africa has reached 9,191, including 4,546 deaths. For more infectious disease news and information, visit and “like” the Infectious Disease News Facebook page
One thought on “WHO acknowledges failures in Ebola response as number of cases top 9,000”