Doctors
Without Borders has published a report on the Ebola outbreak which has claimed
over 10,000 lives. The frontline aid agency has condemned the slow global
response, particularly from the World Health Organization.
A year on
from the start of the worst Ebola outbreak in history, Doctors Without Borders
published a report slamming the international community's response to the
crisis, particularly that of the World Health Organization (WHO).
Doctors
Without Borders - known by its French acronym MSF - also detailed the
"indescribable horror" faced by its staff as they were forced to turn
away the sick due to a lack of resources and could only spend one minute per
patient because of the great number of cases flooding their facilities.
The MSF
report accuses the WHO, charged with a leading role on global health
emergencies, of being far too slow in taking action and of taking on a
distanced, administrative role instead of a dominant medical one. It further
accuses the organization of only declaring "a public health emergency of
international concern" once Western health workers had contracted the
disease while working in the worst-hit countries in West Africa.
Meetings
instead of action
According
to MSF, there was a meeting in Geneva at the end of June last year between the
WHO, MSF, and similar agencies, at which the aid group asked for an immediate
response in Liberia that did not fully materialize until July, by which time a
second wave of the disease had struck.
Of the more
than 10,000 Ebola deaths to date, more than 4,200 of them were in Liberia.
"Meetings
happened. Action didn't," Marie-Christine Ferir, MSF emergency coordinator,
said in the report.
"All
the elements that led to the outbreak's resurgence in June were also present in
March, but the analysis, recognition and willingness to assume responsibility
were not," the report read. Therefore it fell to MSF to bear the brunt of
the response in the early months, despite only having 40 staff members with
Ebola experience before the spread of the virus began.
The report
also criticizes the governments of Sierra Leone and Guinea, the other two
hardest-hit countries, for refusing to admit the scale of the epidemic and
putting "needless obstacles" in the path of MSF teams.
es/lw (AFP, epd)
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