Ebola's Lessons

August 24, 2015 11:59 AM

How the WHO Mishandled the Ebola Crisis A well-written Foreign Affairs essay by Laurie Garrett, author of The Coming Plague, about how the WHO (mis)managed the recent Ebola outbreak.
posted by narcissus_and_ambrosia (3 comments total)

Mod note: A few comments deleted. Sorry, I do get the impulse, but given the subject matter, let's rewind and start this over without the hurf durf rock band stuff?
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 6:22 PM on August 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

In light of the ridiculous mishandling of this situation and the porous borders around Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea, I am still amazed that it was contained in Lagos, of all places, and that it did not make it into Cote d'Ivoire. I work just across the Liberian border in southwest Cote d'Ivoire, where it seems like half the population is wearing STOP EBOLA t-shirts and making sure their kids leave fruits which might have been eaten by bats alone, and they have closed down the official bush meat markets bringing in meat from Liberia, and even the tiny kiosks in the tiny villages sell hand sanitizer. Because it is so close to the border, everyone has family in Liberia. A friend lost her brother to Ebola, another got stuck when they closed the border - she was 6 months pregnant and ended up having the kid in Liberia in the village where her grandmother came from but nobody in her immediate family had lived in in 40 some-odd years.

When I was working on getting permission from my university to go back to West Africa in the middle of the Ebola stuff, my field assistant gave me a call to ask when I was coming back. I explained that the university was not thrilled about the idea of sending me off to Cote d'Ivoire in the middle of the outbreak. He was indignant. But Erin, remind them that more people have died of Ebola in the Untied States than in Cote d'Ivoire!
posted by ChuraChura at 7:23 PM on August 24, 2015 [8 favorites]

That was a really thoughtful article, contextualizing some things I'd heard before in interesting (and depressing) ways. Garrett notes the complex pressures the WHO operates under, but doesn't shy away from calling out specific people like Margaret Chan and Hans Rosling for bad decisions and poor leadership. The part about Doctors Without Borders trying desperately to convince the WHO that the epidemic was worsening while WHO staff were accusing them of "encouraging panic" is just horrifying.

Thanks for the link, narcissus.
posted by mediareport at 9:18 PM on August 24, 2015 [1 favorite]