WeeklySA_AdminBRING DRC’S EBOLA MEDICAL MISSION CULPRITS TO BOOK
An august body like the World Health Organisation bears a mammoth responsibility and clout as directing and coordinating international health authority within the United Nations system.
This is a duty thrust upon it with great trust and high expectations by the global community of nations, while adhering to the UN values of integrity, professionalism and respect for diversity.
It is within this context that the WHO director-general Tedros Ghebreyesus must have experienced one of the most difficult moments in his career since becoming the head of this powerful organisation on September 28, when facing a media conference on a topic unbecoming of the body’s image. With a sense of huge embarrassment, the good doctor had to jostle with the unenviable task – of course, one which he would have dreaded for some time – of presenting the shocking findings of an independent commission which investigated allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which happened during the Ebola outbreak between 2018 and 2020. At the time, the WHO had dispensed a medical response to the Ebola virus disease epidemic in DRC’s North Kivu and Ituri territories. An ill-fated mission that led him to appoint a commission in October last year, to probe alleged serious misdemeanours involving a team of medical specialists stationed at these territories. As it turned out, testimonies handed later to the commission co-chairmen Aïchatou Mindaoudou and Madame Julienne Lusenge would corroborate the media reports and give a glimpse of depravities that marred a noble mission to mitigate human suffering.
Shockingly, none of the crass revelations mirrored the esteemed world organisation’s hallowed values, painting an unedifying picture of a WHO staff completely gone berserk, operating under its own rules, accountable to no one, behaving in the most barbaric manner – in contrast with the decorum of a mercy mission. To describe those behind these dehumanising acts against poor and desperate Congolese women as merchants of pain and cruelty, is hardly enough. Here were individuals arbitrarily behaving in the most despicable manner and unprofessionally, in the name of an organisation that has always assured beneficiaries of its relief programmes, values professing its staff to be “trusted to serve public health at all times; put people’s health interests first; engage with everyone honestly and in good faith; professionals committed to excellence in health; we uphold the highest standards of professionalism…”
In the end, WHO’s Ebola response team were to leave a shameful legacy of reign of terror allegedly perpetrated by some of its own staff, “raping and forcing women to have sex with them in exchange for jobs” in acts of disproportionate magnitude – something to be condemned in the strongest possible terms. This shocking state of affairs has overtly rocked the WHO in possibly the worst scandal ever, warranting the most punitive measures to be taken. For their part, WHO authorities have commendably launched further investigations to bring the perpetrators to book. While laudable, accountability must also extend to those in authority, accused of abetting the exposed indignities through conspiratorial silence, a sheer dereliction of duty and Hippocratic Oath. It is laudable that Ghebreyesus has expressed a grave sense of shame over this sordid saga and apologised profusely – some comfort to the victims, but to even remotely to remove the horror of the Congolese’s grievous experience. Which brings us to the issue of amends, in the form of reparations as mooted by Ghebreyesus, which must equal or supersede the severity of these crimes.
