| MSF Critical of
WHO in Battle Against Ebola |
| MSF, the
medical organization that has been in the frontline of the
struggle against the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, is unhappy
with
the response of the international community, including the World Health
Organization, to the epidemic. Reacting directly to the declaration by
WHO of an international public health emergency, Dr Bart Janssens, MSF
Director of Operations, had this to say: "Declaring Ebola an international
public health emergency shows how
seriously WHO is taking the current outbreak; but statements won't save
lives. Now we need this statement to translate into immediate action on
the ground. For weeks, MSF has been repeating that a massive medical,
epidemiological and public health response is desperately needed to
save lives and reverse the course of the epidemic.Lives are being lost
because the response is too slow. Countries possessing necessary
capacities must immediately dispatch available infectious disease
experts and disaster relief assets to the region. It is clear the
epidemic will not be contained without a massive deployment on the
ground from these states."
In a separate interview ( https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-28807281 ) MSF President Joanne Liu "...called for more action from the international community and stronger leadership from WHO - the UN's health agency." The background to this is that on June 22 this year MSF declared the disease “totally out of control”, and beyond the limits of its resources (read Ebola out of control). It reported outbreaks in 60 separate locations in the region, an unprecedented geographic spread for Ebola. However, on July 9, the assistant Director-General of WHO, Dr Keiji Fukunda, met with President Ernest Koroma at State House and made a point of disagreeing with the assessment that the situation was out of control. The situation has nonetheless continued to deteriorate dramatically. Apart from the Sierra Leone government, MSF is the only organization with medical workers in the field actually treating Ebola patients. MSF has also operated treatment centers in Guinea from the start of the outbreak there. They also have been active in Liberia, helping to set up a treatment centre there. The WHO is largely staffed by administrators and other desk workers. Its office in Sierra Leone, in the western suburbs of the capital, is far from the epicentre of the outbreak. |
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