With more than 8,000 lives claimed, this Ebola outbreak is considered to be the biggest, longest, most complex and most severe in the almost 40 years that the disease has been in existence. Unfortunately, the World Health Organization, along with the rest of the world, was slow in responding to the crisis, a fault the United Nations agency admits.
Addressing the Executive Board on Ebola in a meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, Dr. Margaret Chan, WHO director-general, laid out the need for reforms within the agency, pointing out how these reforms will help the WHO not just address the current Ebola outbreak but prevent something of the same magnitude from ever happening again.
"The WHO we have is not the WHO we need," said Dr. Tom Frieden, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director.
Chan acknowledged the WHO's shortcomings but did not forget to give credit to the outpouring of support from various governments and organizations around the world that made it possible to slow down the outbreak but still highlighted how efforts could have been implemented more smoothly and quickly to provide aid to affected countries in West Africa.
"The data tell us we have bent the curve and avoided the worst-case scenario. We must now focus on the proven public health measures needed to get the job done," she said.
"Cases are clearly declining in all three countries, but we must maintain the momentum and guard against complacency and donor fatigue. Getting to zero cases of Ebola in the three remaining countries is our collective goal. This can be done but is not going to be easy."
Aside from reiterating the need for a contingency fund that will support rapid response programs for emergencies and outbreaks, the proposed reforms included: streamlined recruitment procedures that will facilitate in pooling well-trained health workers, all of which should be appropriately compensated; the use of the "one WHO" approach which standardizes operating procedures across all levels of organization; and enhanced crisis management in country offices.
While these proposed reforms ultimately seek the improvement of the WHO, they also undermine the agency's own decision to cut back on its outbreak department two years ago and challenge its insistence that the agency's expertise lies in providing technical guidance and not as a first responder.
However, these reforms are still just proposals, with Dr. Bruce Aylward, who leads the organization's response to Ebola, saying that regional and country offices have not yet signed off on them. Details are still being hammered out, which can also be challenging.
