World Health Organisation and DfID slow to react on Ebola, say UK MPs

The British government has been urged to press world leaders to review the function and structure of the World Health Organisation (WHO) following its failure to recognise the scale and the severity of the Ebola crisis.

The House of Commons international development committee has criticised the WHO and also the Department for International Development (DfID) for not reacting quickly enough when the virus took hold earlier this year.

But it commended DfID for the "vigorous efforts" now being made in Sierra Leone, where Britain has taken the lead in international aid, mirroring the US role in neighbouring Liberia and France's role in Guinea.

The international development committee warned that the global health system "remains dangerously inadequate for responding to health emergencies" and said "DfID should not wait for its 2015 multilateral aid review" to do something about this, adding: "The urgency of the situation warrants immediate action."

It pressed the international development secretary Justine Greening to move quickly and decisively to guard against a repeat of the disaster, which has claimed the lives of almost 7,000 people in west Africa.

The committee asked DfID to set up a global conference in 2015 to agree a common plan to reconstruct health systems in the region, which it said were already fragile before the outbreak.

"It is imperative that once the immediate crisis is over, the eyes of the world do not turn away from the region," it said.

A DfID spokesman said: "The UK is the largest bilateral donor to Sierra Leone and our action in response to this unprecedented Ebola epidemic is already having a significant impact.

"There are very few health systems in the world that could withstand a health crisis on this scale, but it is right to say we need to learn lessons from how the WHO and the international community responded.

"We will continue to support the people of Sierra Leone, both throughout the immediate emergency and in the recovery period."

Sir Malcolm Bruce, the Liberal Democrat MP who is chairman of the international development committee, said: "Had attention been paid over recent years to strengthening the health system as we recommended in the past, and had more Sierra Leonean health professionals been retained in the domestic system, the impact of Ebola would have been less severe."

The committee commended all those who have risked their lives to tackle Ebola, in particular those working with Médecins sans Frontières.

"[It was] the first international organisation to recognise the scale of the epidemic and respond accordingly. Unfortunately, the World Health Organisation was slow to do likewise. This was a failing on its part. However, it was also a failing on the part of its members, who cut its funding and have put insufficient emphasis on building sustainable health systems in developing countries," its report said.

The committee also criticised DfID for not disbursing funds quickly enough in Sierra Leone. If found that, as of 26 November, only £117m of the £230m pledged had reached Sierra Leone, "falling some way short of disbursement rates achieved by other donors".

The evidence suggested there were still insufficient medical professionals to staff new treatment centres, and the committee asked for monthly updates from DfID on its plans.

It said it was "to some extent not a surprise" that Sierra Leone's health system had been "overwhelmed" by the Ebola outbreak given the continued fragility of its infrastructure since the civil war, which ended in 2002. The country was "woefully short of doctors and nurses before the crisis began" and had difficulty retaining those who had trained in the country.

source: http://www.theguardian.com/