Former African Head of State to Investigate the World’s Response to Covid-19

The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced that Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberia’s former president, and Helen Clark, New Zealand’s former prime minister, are to head a panel to review the global response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Mrs Sirleaf led Liberia during the Ebola epidemic that began in 2014, killing more than 11,000 people in West Africa. New Zealand has been lauded as a success story for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said it was time to reflect and to strengthen collaboration in order to contain the pandemic. “Through you, the world will understand the truth of what happened and also the solutions to build our future better as one humanity,” the AFP news agency quoted Dr Tedros as saying. The WHO has been under pressure for some time to review its handling of the pandemic. It has faced criticism, most notably from the United States, that it was slow to respond to the initial outbreak in China; the evaluation announced by the WHO will look not just at the WHO’s response, but at the response of individual countries as well.

SOURCE: BBC