WHO’s to blame? The World Health Organization and the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa

Since 2001 the World Health Organization (WHO) has been actively promoting its credentials for managing ‘global health security’. However, the organisation’s initial response to the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa has attracted significant criticism, even prompting calls for its dissolution and the creation of a new global health agency. Drawing on principal–agent theory and insights from previous disease outbreaks, this article examines what went wrong, the extent to which the organisation can be held to account, and what this means for the WHO’s global health security mandate.