SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
ebola
As Uganda Reports Ebola Death, Experts Sound Alarm on Trump's Order to Quit WHO
"This is pure stupidity that will only hurt us," warned one U.S. doctor and Ebola expert.
Jan 31, 2025
Public health experts pointed to the announcement of highly contagious hemorrhagic fever outbreaks in at least three central and eastern African nations this week to underscore what they say are the dangers of President Donald Trump's ideologically driven decision to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization during a time of mounting pandemic threats.
Uganda Ministry of Health Permanent Secretary Diana Atwine said Thursday that a 32-year-old nurse died of Sudan Ebola virus the previous day in the capital Kampala amid the first new outbreak in two years. Atwine assured the public "that we are in full control" of the situation.
Uganda's alert followed reports of another potential Ebola outbreak, this one in the Western Democratic Republic of Congo. Additionally, health officials earlier this month announced an outbreak of suspected Marburg Virus Disease—a severe, often fatal illness similar to Ebola—in neighboring Tanzania. At least nine people have reportedly died.
World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on social media Thursday that "a full-scale response is being initiated" by the Ugandan government and its international partners. In a statement, the WHO said it is "deploying senior public health experts and mobilizing staff from the country office to support all the key outbreak response measures."
During past outbreaks of Ebola—a severe viral disease spread via contact with infected bodily fluids, with a fatality rate of 50-90%—the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) worked with the WHO to help stem the spread of the illness.
However, following Trump's January 20 executive order initiating a U.S. withdrawal from the WHO over its alleged "mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic," CDC and other public health officials have been ordered to stop working with the United Nations body, effective immediately.
"The agencies that are statutorily responsible for protecting our health are unable to do that job because they are not able to pick up the phone and talk to people who might have information that could protect U.S. health and security," Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University's School of Public Health, toldStat this week.
"This is just one of the examples about how the United States loses access, loses the ability to protect American lives," Nuzzo explained. "We can't be everywhere, we can't have eyes and ears on the ground in every possible location [where] harm could be emerging. And this is what happens when we don't engage with institutions that can provide these lifesaving insights."
Experts said other existing or emerging epidemiological threats including bird flu underscore the lifesaving imperative of more, not less, international cooperation.
"Local health officials and doctors depend on the CDC to get disease updates, timely prevention, testing and treatment guidelines, and information about outbreaks," University of Southern California public health expert Dr. Jeffrey Klausner toldThe Associated Press in a recent interview.
"Shutting down public health communication stops a basic function of public health," he added. "Imagine if the government turned off fire sirens or other warning systems."
Dr. Ashish Jha, the former White House Covid-19 coordinator during the Biden administration, noted Thursday on social media that during Ebola outbreaks, the CDC "usually sends a team right away to help bolster staff that might already be there and support the ministry of health."
"There'd be clear communication from CDC and White House about what exactly is being done, what help we are sending, what American hospitals and others can do to be prepared should Ebola land here," Jha continued. "So what of this is happening? My sense is, not much—but we don't know."
"The communication freeze means CDC not sharing what if anything it is doing," he added. "Travel freeze means CDC staff likely not going. Directive to stop working with WHO means we're flying blind and don't have information about what is happening on the ground. None of this is good."
Keep ReadingShow Less
The World's Failed Response to Covid-19 in Africa Must End
Africans are paying the price of global abandonment with their lives.
Feb 22, 2022
When the Ebola virus was ravaging West African countries in 2014, health care providers, public health researchers and activists worked feverishly to stamp it out before it spread and turned into the type of life-shattering pandemic we're all too familiar with today.
COVID-19 has revealed the continued global failure to help build a long-promised meaningful, swift-acting, effective, and fair international public health infrastructure to save lives across the African continent.
But the global response to COVID-19 in Africa has been too little, too late. When The New York Times reported in January 2021 that the dead were not being counted in Africa, it failed to mention the living had been abandoned. Africans are paying the price of global abandonment with their lives. The world must improve its response, or future variants of COVID-19 and new viruses and pathogens will surely soon emerge. And we've all seen the impact an unchecked virus can have on the world.
Since the outbreak of COVID-19, Africans have once again mobilized their societies and communities to avert a health care calamity. Religious and so-called "traditional" leaders, secular grassroots associations, radio stations, and universities have joined the fight against the virus. Across Africa, people know about the veracity of COVID-19 and the effectiveness a vaccine provides in fighting its deadliness. They have been persuaded by local efforts to fight epidemics, which, post-Ebola, have been built into West Africa's health sectors, communities, and surveillance capabilities.
Yet in global politics, African engagement to stop disease spread is neither recognized nor supported. COVID-19 has revealed the continued global failure to help build a long-promised meaningful, swift-acting, effective, and fair international public health infrastructure to save lives across the African continent.
Having been part of the initial efforts to stamp out Ebola, we demand that the international community support African health care systems in reversing the spread of COVID-19 on the continent. These efforts must include dropping the patents of COVID-19 vaccines so that African countries can manufacture the vaccines without fear of legal repercussions.
Global public opinion has accepted the view that mRNA vaccines are too complex and too sophisticated to produce in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. This is a ruse. The truth is that corporate patents on mRNA vaccines are one of the greatest barriers to rolling out generic vaccines across Africa. There are 120 manufacturing sites that have the capacity to produce mRNA vaccines on all three continents.
Recently two Texas-based scientists, Maria Elena Bottazzi and Peter Hotez, have developed Corbevax, a patent-free vaccine that has been approved by the Indian government and will be produced by the Hyderabad-based company Biological E. This new patent-free vaccine has been, quite appropriately, called "a gift for the world" - and it is especially needed in Africa, where only about 11% of the continent's population is fully vaccinated.
Nobody should die for the right of the patent. "Patent protections and other IP restrictions are only the latest means of enforcing and worsening inequalities that date to the slave trade and the colonial period," said Jesse B. Bump, executive director of the Takemi Program in International Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. To this day, rich countries leverage their economic power to extract African rare earth elements, cocoa, diamonds, and other resources under most inhumane circumstances. Patents for COVID-19 vaccinations are another expression of the desire of Western companies and the countries that support them to extract yet more from Africa and make the most money possible.
In addition to Big Pharma dropping the patents, Covax, the UN's facility to finance the distribution of vaccines, must be adequately funded. There is no false choice between these two positions. Essential goods like masks, PPE, therapeutics, and vaccine commodities such as syringes are facing shortages in Africa but not elsewhere.
We call upon the G20 countries to donate $10 billion to COVAX and to the support of the COVID-19 response in Africa. For too long, Africa has had to witness the world tolerate its suffering and cope with austere responses to emergency conditions. The African health care infrastructure is marked by severe austerity--epitomized by the barebones Ebola treatment units set up during the 2014 Ebola crisis-where patients received a minimum of treatment, and the imperative of disease control trumped the obligation of care. This bias, too, has deep roots in colonialism, when containing diseases was indispensable for Europeans to conquer and maintain territory. Global health, as it is currently funded, cannot compensate for the immense needs of "clinical deserts" on the African continent. To illustrate the dearth of funding: the WHO's entire budget is comparable to a large US hospital's.
Having observed the devastations of disease spread and the valiant efforts of locals to respond to them, we demand that the international community invest in African health care systems in reversing the spread of COVID-19 on the continent. Such an investment would not be just an act of morality and fairness. As this pandemic and Ebola have vividly shown, improving African health care is in the self-interest of the entire world. Africans have mobilized all their resources to beat back the spread of the coronavirus--it's time the rest of the world does its part.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Sickening Betrayal': Panel Finds 83 Cases of Alleged Abuse During WHO's Ebola Work in Congo
"This is the biggest finding of sexual abuse perpetrated during a single U.N. initiative in one area or one country during the time-bound period of a U.N. response effort," said one campaigner.
Sep 28, 2021
An investigation into sexual abuse related to United Nations efforts to contain the Ebola outbreak in Congo found over 80 alleged perpetrators, a quarter of whom were employed by the U.N.'s public health agency, according to a report released Tuesday.
The findings come from a panel commissioned by the World Health Organization (WHO) in response to media reports about abuse claims during the 2018-2020 mission in the African country.
"This is the biggest finding of sexual abuse perpetrated during a single U.N. initiative in one area or one country during the time-bound period of a U.N. response effort," Paula Donovan, co-director of the Code Blue Campaign, which works to end sexual exploitation by U.N. peacekeepers, told the Associated Press. The AP previously reported on some allegations.
According to the panel:
The review team was able to obtain the identity of 83 alleged perpetrators. In 21 cases, the review team was able to establish with certainty that the alleged perpetrators were WHO employees during the response... The alleged perpetrators include both Congolese nationals and foreigners. The majority of the alleged perpetrators were Congolese staff hired on a temporary basis who took advantage of their apparent authority to obtain sexual favors.
Investigators documented nine allegations of rape. The youngest victim was believed to be only 13 years old. Some survivors reported that no protection was used. Six said they experienced miscarriages. Others shared accounts of alleged abusers coercing them into having an abortion.
Allegations of sexual abuse, exploitation, and harassment "were made against WHO doctors, consultants, and senior staff, some national and some international, as well as other medical staff who were deployed by the Ministry of Health and others," the report says.
The report notes allegations were also made against staff in the immunization and risk communication team, people working in human resources, drivers, and security staff. It adds that despite detailed accounts from victims, "the majority of alleged and identified perpetrators have simply denied the facts, even in the presence of corroborating evidence, when they have not simply taken refuge behind the argument of a 'consensual relationship.'"
Sophie Harman, a professor of international politics at Queen Mary University of London, warned that the panel's revelations may be just the beginning, telling the AP that "more cases are bound to come forward across the world."
Harman also called for a shift to focus on helping survivors, which she said requires not only prosecution of perpetrators but also "full accountability on the part of WHO leadership who knew about the rumors and reports, and yet took years to act on this issue."
\u201c83 cases of sexual abuse in the Ebola response in Congo. 21 employees of #WHO \n\nhttps://t.co/z9dUJJKw0B \n\nMy blood boils. Senior leadership knew 2 years ago & only now we have findings.\n\nhttps://t.co/VmDl0Q6AmQ\n\nWHO l'ship must be held to account. Fear this is tip of iceberg.\u201d— Prof. Sophie Harman (@Prof. Sophie Harman) 1632841399
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus addressed the findings during a Tuesday press conference to unveil the report, which he said "makes for harrowing reading."
"The first thing I want to say is to the victims and survivors of the sexual exploitation and abuse described in the commission's report," Tedros said. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry for what was done to you by people who were employed by WHO to serve and protect you."
"I'm sorry for the ongoing suffering that these events must cause," he continued. "I'm sorry that you have had to relive them in talking to the commission about your experiences. Thank you for your courage in doing so. What happened to you should never happen to anyone. It is inexcusable."
Tedros said that "as the director-general, I take ultimate responsibility for the behavior of the people we employ, and for any failings in our systems that allowed this behavior," adding that "it is my top priority to ensure that the perpetrators are not excused, but are held to account."
The agency leader pledged that the WHO will take steps to support, protect, and ensure justice for the survivors; address management and staff failures; and reform structures and culture.
\u201c@DrTedros @UN "To further strengthen accountability, we have asked the Independent Oversight and Advisory Committee of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme to monitor and report transparently on our progress"-@DrTedros\u201d— World Health Organization (WHO) (@World Health Organization (WHO)) 1632837009
Some of those actions include banning identified perpetrators from future employment with the WHO, as well as notifying the broader U.N. system; terminating the contracts of four people identified as perpetrators who were still employed by the agency; and referring allegations of rape to authorities in Congo and, if applicable, the alleged perpetrators' countries.
The conduct described in the report "is a sickening betrayal of the people we serve," said Tedros. "But it's also a betrayal of our colleagues who put themselves in harm's way to serve others, including those who paid the ultimate price, killed by armed groups in North Kivu, while working to protect the health of vulnerable communities from Ebola."
Thanking the commission as well as journalists who previously reported on the abuse, he added that "this is a dark day for WHO--but by shining a light on the failures of individuals and the organization, we hope that the victims feel that their voices have been heard and acted on."
The National Sexual Assault Online Hotline is 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) and a live chat service is available at www.rainn.org. Both offer 24/7, free, and confidential support.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular