An independent panel of experts selected to examine the response of the World Health Organization (WHO) to the Ebola Outbreak has blamed the agency’s politics and rigid organisation structure for the poor response to the epidemic.
More than 27,500 people were infected with Ebola and more than 11,200 died in West Africa. Luckily in Nigeria, the disease was curbed before it could spread any further.
In a report published Tuesday, the panel said “WHO does not have a culture of rapid decision-making and tends to adopt a reactive, rather than a proactive, approach to emergencies. In the early stages of the Ebola crisis, messages were sent by experienced staff at headquarters and the Regional Office for Africa, including after deployments in the field, about the seriousness of the crisis. Either these did not reach senior leaders or senior leaders did not recognize their significance.
“WHO does not have an organizational culture that supports open and critical dialogue between senior leaders and staff or that permits risk-taking or critical approaches to decision-making. There seems to have been a hope that the crisis could be managed by good diplomacy rather than by scaling up emergency action.”
The panel recommended that WHO must establish its prominence as the guardian of the global health.