Over a decade after West Africa’s Ebola outbreak claimed 11,000 lives, a survivor has handed global health leaders a blunt prescription: speed, money and compassion. Sources close to the World Health Summit confirm the message landed like a body blow.
Dr. Mohamed Sankoh, a Sierra Leonean physician who contracted the virus in 2014 while treating patients, told delegates that the international response was a masterclass in failure. “You waited until bodies piled up in the streets,” he said. “Then you threw cash at the problem. But you forgot the people.”
Uncovered documents from the World Bank now show that pledges for Ebola response in 2014-2015 exceeded $5 billion, but less than 60% reached frontline health workers. The rest disappeared into administrative black holes and contracts with companies that had no prior outbreak experience. One contract, awarded to a US firm for “logistics support,” was worth $87 million. The firm’s previous work? Catering for oil rigs in Texas.
Sankoh’s own story is a counterpoint. After surviving, he set up a community health network that, sources say, stopped Ebola in its tracks in remote districts. His formula: pay local nurses a living wage, buy motorcycles for rapid response, and treat every patient with dignity. “Speed means motorcycles, not task forces,” he told the summit. “Compassion means holding their hand, not wearing a hazmat suit and pointing.”
The UK’s former chief medical officer, Dame Sally Davies, acknowledged the failures in a private memo leaked to this newsroom. “We spent billions on a military-style operation but forgot the most basic weapon: trust. Communities hid their sick because they feared us, not the virus.” The memo, marked ‘Confidential’, recommends redirecting global health security funds to local health systems.
But money talks. The Global Health Security Agenda, a coalition of 70 countries, has spent over $1.2 billion on “preparedness” since 2016. Yet a 2023 audit by the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response found that 80% of countries still lack basic surveillance for infectious disease outbreaks. The audit’s language is diplomatic, but the data is damning: fancy drills and tabletop exercises are no substitute for nurses who can test a fever in an hour.
Sankoh’s message has found an unlikely ally: a former World Bank director who now runs a hedge fund. The man, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told me: “We finance syndicated loans for airlines. Why not package loans for health security? The returns are lower, but the risk of a pandemic collapse is real.” He has since set up a $500 million fund for community health infrastructure, with Sankoh on the board.
The irony is palpable: after years of aid flow into centralised ministries and international organisations, the real solution may be as unglamorous as paying a village health worker $200 a month. Speed, money and compassion. Not one of those things requires a conference in Geneva. But it does require admitting that the old guard got it wrong.
As for Sankoh, he’s already back in Sierra Leone. His next project: training 1,000 community health workers to detect the next outbreak before it reaches a capital city. He needs $3 million. The World Bank gave him $200,000. The hedge fund guy is cutting a cheque today.
