President Mahama laments slow initial global response to Ebola

The Ebola epidemic in West Africa could have been dealt with better if the international community had responded much quicker to the initial stages of the outbreak, according to President John Dramani Mahama.
He said: “Unfortunately, the response by the rest of the world was quite slow. As a result of the cultural practices and the peculiar nature of the area in which the outbreak occurred, it has spiralled much wider than we had expected and has not been possible to contain it as quickly as possible.”
President Mahama, who was speaking in Denmark after a state visit, also said that the frail public health systems of the affected countries after conflicts contributed to the spread.
“The three countries affected have been countries that were in conflict and therefore had a very weak public health system and so when the outbreak occurred, the facilities just did not exist to be able to offer any treatment to people,” he said.
Denmark has donated $1.7 million to help Ghana fight the deadly virus.