Ebola-Hit States Plead for More Help, WHO Rebuked for Slow Response

Two West African nations and a medical charity fighting the world’s worst Ebola epidemic chided the World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday for its slow response, saying more action was needed to save victims threatened by the disease and hunger.

With the death toll over 1,000 and still climbing, the U.N. health agency is facing questions over whether it moved quickly enough to declare the months-old outbreak a “public health emergency of international concern”, which it did on Aug 8.

Medical charity MSF (Doctors Without Borders), which has been one of the most active groups in fighting the outbreak, said its spread had created a “wartime” situation in the worst-affected states of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea. Nigeria is also facing a smaller separate outbreak.

Sierra Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma said his nation’s only two treatment centers were “overwhelmed”. In neighboring Liberia, Information Minister Lewis Brown said Ebola-affected rural areas quarantined by troops faced serious food shortages.

“We need a more robust response to the nature of the disease and the way it is affecting us,” Koroma said in Freetown, adding he had delivered this message to the WHO, which is coordinating international efforts to try to control the outbreak.

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