Subscriber content preview. or Sign In
The agency has been missing in action at a critical time
In March, a blurry photograph appeared on a news website in the West African nation of Guinea. The image showed two women in a remote village lying on grass mats, while several men stood over them wondering what illness had struck their loved ones. The women were dying. The news site quoted the village nurse as saying the mystery killer was “extremely serious.”
But the mystery was soon solved. Officials working for the United Nations’ World Health Organization (WHO) in the Guinean capital of Conakry announced that tests had shown the women in the village had become infected by the deadly Ebola virus. It took more than a week for the news of the re-emergence of Ebola to make its …