After Slow Ebola Response, WHO Seeks to Avoid Repeat

Health Body to Consider Rapid-Response Teams, Other Changes

WALL STREET JOURNAL by Betsy McKay in Atlanta and Peter Wonacott in Freetown, Sierra Leone             Dec. 30, 2014

The tepid initial response to West Africa’s Ebola outbreak exposed holes in the global health system so gaping it has prompted the World Health Organization to consider steps to prevent a repeat, including emergency-response teams and a fund for public-health crises.

In a special session next month in Geneva, the WHO’s executive board is expected to consider those and other recommendations by its member countries—including a proposal that it commission an outside review of its Ebola response—according to a document reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The plan comes as global health officials are struggling with a knotty question: how the WHO could have moved at a slow pace initially despite lessons learned more than a decade ago from another deadly outbreak, of SARS.

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http://www.wsj.com/articles/after-slow-ebola-response-who-seeks-to-avoid-repeat-1419892712