Ebola crisis: global response has ‘failed miserably’, says World Bank chief

Thursday, October 9, 2014
By Paul Martin

Jim Kim demands $20bn fund and says ‘we failed miserably’ as cases in Spain and US fuel fear of western pandemic

Larry Elliott
The Guardian
Wednesday 8 October 2014

The president of the World Bank, Jim Kim, admitted on Wednesday that the international community had “failed miserably” in its response to the Ebola virus that has killed more than 3,800 people in west Africa and warned that the crisis now affecting Spain and the US was going to get much worse.

Amid signs yesterday that western governments were being forced to take the risks of a global pandemic more seriously, Kim said he wanted them to back a new $20bn (£12bn) global health fund that would be able to react instantly to emergencies.

“It’s late. It’s really late,” he said in an interview with the Guardian before the annual meeting of the Washington-based organisation this weekend.

“We should have done so many things. Healthcare systems should have been built. There should have been monitoring when the first cases were reported. There should have been an organised response.”

Kim’s warning that the global community was still not “moving fast enough” came as the Ebola virus claimed its first victim in the US and news of a case in Spain sent shares in travel and airline companies tumbling on stock exchanges.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said the number of deaths from Ebola in west Africa now stood at 3,879 with no evidence that the epidemic was being brought under control.

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