Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker Machado Meyer Advogados has helped a subsidiary of Brazilian retailer Lojas Renner acquire local logistics technology company Uello expert analysis and essential resources from the Latin Lawyer experts Copyright © Law Business ResearchCompany Number: 03281866 VAT: GB 160 7529 10 These firms have professional notices in the Latin Lawyer 250 Get more from LLSign up to our daily email alert Unlock unlimited access to all Latin Lawyer content Internal documents show WHO was receiving emails by mid-April 2014 from staffers in Guinea calling for help with epidemic The World Health Organisation dragged its feet for two months over declaring the Ebola outbreak a global emergency for fear of damaging the economy of Guinea and other afflicted countries The internal documents obtained by the Associated Press in Geneva reveal that WHO’s Geneva headquarters was receiving emails by mid-April 2014 from staffers on the ground in Guinea calling for help with an epidemic that had already killed 100 people but was recognised to be largely hidden and spreading One of the emails was from an experienced Ebola expert with WHO’s Africa office who wrote to a Geneva official saying the situation had taken a critical turn because many health workers at the Donka hospital in Guinea’s capital “What we see is the tip of an iceberg,” wrote Jean-Bosco Ndihokubwayo The scientist requested the help of half a dozen veteran outbreak responders writing in all capitals in the email’s subject line: “WE NEED SUPPORT.” WHO official Stella Chungong said she was very worried warning in an email that terrified health workers might abandon Donka Hospital and that new Ebola cases were coming out of nowhere change [of] course if we hope to control this outbreak,” she said together with the publicity around the infection of two American health workers who were repatriated for treatment UK and other countries together in the fight against the disease Spokesman Gregory Hartl told reporters that “this outbreak isn’t different from previous outbreaks” In a Twitter message sent by Hartl and preserved by ITV News he is shown asking: “You want to disrupt the economic life of a country [because] of 130 suspect and confirmed cases?” Formenty said teams in Conakry had seen patients pop up all over the city with no known links to other cases “This means there is one part of the epidemic that is hidden,” he later wrote in an internal report “The Ebola outbreak could restart at any time.” there were discussions at WHO over whether to call a global health emergency An internal document says such a declaration “ramps up political pressure in the countries affected” and “mobilises foreign aid and action.” But one director viewed it as a “last resort” WHO was having to contend with other outbreaks There were also issues with the government of Guinea was reporting only confirmed Ebola cases and not those suspected or probable in a bid to downplay the dangers and avoid alarming foreigners working in the mining industry head of the pandemic and epidemic diseases department at WHO acknowledged that her agency made wrong decisions but said postponing the alert made sense at the time because it could have had catastrophic economic consequences “What I’ve seen in general is that for developing countries it’s sort of a death warrant you’re signing,” she told AP and others sent a memo to WHO chief Dr Margaret Chan noting that cases might soon pop up in Mali But the memo went on to say that declaring an international emergency or even convening an emergency committee to discuss the issue “could be seen as a hostile act” In a meeting at WHO headquarters on 30 July Liu said she told Chan: “You have the legitimacy and the authority to label it an emergency .. After WHO declared an international emergency on 8 August Barack Obama sent 3,000 troops to west Africa and promised to build more than a dozen 100-bed field hospitals Britain and France also pledged to build Ebola clinics and Cuba sent more than 400 health workers maintains however that labelling the Ebola outbreak a global emergency would have been no magic bullet “What you would expect is the whole world wakes up and goes: ‘Oh my gosh we have to deploy additional people and send money,’” he said “Instead what happened is people thought: ‘Oh my goodness there’s something really dangerous happening there and we need to restrict travel and the movement of people.’”