By Stephanie Nebehay GENEVA (Reuters) -The World Health Organization, facing pressure from donors, said an independent investigation into allegations of sexual abuse in Democratic Republic of Congo against WHO aid workers should issue findings by the end of August. The Thomson Reuters Foundation reported last October that more than 50 women had accused aid workers from the WHO and leading charities of sexual exploitation and abuses during the Ebola outbreak. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told its annual ministerial session that some states were frustrated by the pace of the inquiry. The allegations undermine trust in WHO and threaten the critical work we are doing , he said on Friday. The independent commission set up its base in Goma in March and hired an investigative firm JRR that began field investigations in early May, Tedros said. Despite security challenges in Congo s North Kivu region and the volcanic eruptions in the past week, he said: The team is doing its
The head of the World Health Organization acknowledged the U.N. health agency’s response to sexual abuse allegations involving employees who worked in Congo during an Ebola outbreak was “slow,” following an Associated Press investigation that found senior WHO management knew of multiple cases of misconduct.
Published Friday, May 28, 2021 3:23PM EDT GENEVA (AP) - The United States and Britain are stepping up calls for the World Health Organization to take a deeper look into the possible
origins of COVID-19, including a new visit to China where the first human infections were detected.
WHO and Chinese experts issued a first report in March that laid out four hypotheses about how the pandemic emerged. The joint team said the most likely scenario was that the corona
virus jumped into people from bats via an intermediary animal, and the prospect that it erupted from a laboratory was deemed “extremely unlikely.”