In a recent interview with the BBC, Sope Agbejule, delegate for the United Kingdom on the World Health Organization shared insight into the Ebola Crisis and the WHO discussions this weekend.
“Infection rates are reducing in Liberia, they are reducing in Guinea but they are not reducing in Sierra Leone, we need to ask ourselves why that is. The purpose of the WHO is the mitigation and potential eradication of communicable and non-communicable diseases. Education has its place disseminating information is also very important but we cannot, we cannot forget our central purpose which is to manage, reduce and eventually defeat the outbreak. The reason that infection rates reduced in the Liberia and Guinea is because the US moved rapidly into affected areas, their response was robust and targeted.
We need to reduce infection rates, if we can’t achieve that then all the efforts we are discussing today will be in vain and we’ll gather here in six months’ time to create a new plan because the old one didn’t work
Rather than creating a completely new plan we should seek to properly enforce the old one. We need to look at what we’ve done, we need to ask ourselves what have we done, what do we intend to do, can we achieve that with the resources we have, if not, if not what resources do we need.”
BBC Kate Roskvist
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