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ASSOCIATED PRESS by Maria Cheng and Raphael Satter March 20, 2015
GENEVA — In a delay that some say may have cost lives, the World Health Organization resisted calling the Ebola outbreak in West Africa a public health emergency until last summer, two months after staff raised the possibility and long after a senior manager called for a drastic change in strategy, The Associated Press has learned.
Among the reasons the United Nations agency cited in internal deliberations: worries that declaring such an emergency — akin to an international SOS — could anger the African countries involved, hurt their economies or interfere with the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.
Those arguments struck critics, experts and several former WHO staff as wrong-headed.
"That's like saying you don't want to call the fire department because you're afraid the fire trucks will create a disturbance in the neighborhood," said Michael Osterholm, a prominent infectious diseases expert at the University of Minnesota.
In public comments, WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan has repeatedly said the epidemic caught the world by surprise.
Read complete story.
http://news.yahoo.com/emails-un-health-agency-resisted-declaring-ebola-emergency-041824085.html;_ylt=A0LEV7ihLQxVC3MAbAglnIlQ
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Documents Shed New Light on WHO's Slow Ebola Response
cidrap.umn.edu - by Lisa Schnirring - March 20, 2015
Leaked documents from the World Health Organization (WHO) suggest that the agency delayed declaring a global health emergency for Ebola for 2 months, partly because of political reasons, according to an investigation by the Associated Press (AP) . . .
. . . According to internal WHO e-mails obtained by the AP, senior officials in the WHO's African regional office proposed stronger action from headquarters in June at a time when the disease was mainly centered in Guinea but had already become the deadliest Ebola outbreak ever recorded.
The AP investigation found that although the WHO's top leaders were warned about the Ebola situation, they hesitated to call an emergency out of fear of angering the outbreak countries, hurting the nations' mining interests, or complicating pilgrimages to Mecca in October.
(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)
WHO Denies It Delayed Declaration of Ebola Epidemic
VOICE OF AMERICA by Lisa Schlein March 20, 2015
GENEVA—The World Health Organization is vigorously denying accusations that it delayed declaring the Ebola epidemic in West Africa an international public health emergency for political reasons.
An article by the Associated Press said secretly obtained e-mails of internal documents indicated the WHO was afraid that declaring a global emergency could set off alarm bells, which could hurt countries’ economies or interfere with the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.
WHO's spokeswoman on Ebola, Margaret Harris, told VOA that the assertion was categorically untrue.
“There was no secrecy. The minute we were informed of the cases and the minute we had confirmation that it was Ebola-Zaire, we notified the world. ... It is not correct to say that the timing of the declaration of the Public Health Emergency of International Concern was in any way influenced by political considerations,” she said.
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http://www.voanews.com/content/who-denies-delay-declaration-ebola-epidemic/2688938.html