Doctors Without Borders slams slow response to Ebola outbreak
Iran Press TV
Mon Mar 23, 2015 1:43PM
The humanitarian aid organization, Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières), has strongly criticized the United Nations World Health Organization and other international medical emergency bodies for their failure to provide a timely response to West Africa's Ebola epidemic.
In a report titled 'Pushed to the limit and beyond," marking the first anniversary of the outbreak, the French-founded medical charity organization cited some of the mistakes repeatedly committed by the groups handling the public health emergency.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) General Director Christopher Stokes said in the report that the slow international response to the epidemic led to the tragic deaths of thousands of people.
Stokes said the Ebola epidemic in West Africa was 'avoidable,' adding, 'The Ebola outbreak has often been described as a perfect storm: a cross-border epidemic in countries with weak public health systems that had never seen Ebola before.'
The report maintained that lessons learned by previous epidemics were simply ignored in the case of Ebola.
The WHO director general herself admitted in January that the global response to the Ebola crisis was slow.
Speaking in Geneva during a special meeting on Ebola, Margaret Chan said, 'The world, including WHO, was too slow to see what was unfolding before us.'
Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea in West Africa are the three main Ebola-hit countries. From December 2013 to March 2015, according to the WHO, 4,283 died from Ebola in Liberia, 3,712 in Sierra Leone and 2,241 in Guinea, in addition to another 8 people in Nigeria, totaling up to 10,251 people.
Ebola is currently one of the deadliest viruses threatening mankind. It spreads through direct contact with bodily fluids and has no proven vaccine or treatment, so far, although several vaccines are under trial.
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