WHO to review handling of Ebola after leak of damning draft report
After leak of damning draft report, UN agency pledges to analyse its actions, as World Bank chief warns battle against disease is being lost
The World Health Organisation promised a full review of its handling of the Ebola crisis after admitting in a leaked internal document that poorly trained staff botched initial attempts to stop the outbreak spreading in West Africa.
The WHO, the specialist UN agency responsible for co-ordinating global disease outbreaks, said it would not comment on the damning document, which blamed its failings on incompetent staff and a lack of information. The document, a first draft that had not been fact-checked, was "part of an ongoing analysis of our response", it said.
"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," the WHO said.
By Tuesday, Ebola was known to have infected 9,216 people in seven countries, of whom 4,555 died. Oxfam called the crisis the "definitive humanitarian disaster of our generation" in a worldwide appeal for more resources to tackle the problem. Most of the deaths have occurred in three West African nations - Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
The WHO said in the leaked document that experts should have realised that traditional infectious disease containment methods would not work in a region with porous borders and broken health systems. It even suggested its own bureaucracy was a problem.
"Nearly everyone involved in the outbreak response failed to see some fairly plain writing on the wall," the report said.