The conclusions of an independent commission on sex abuse in the Democratic Republic of Congo have left the World Health Organization’s regional director for Africa “heartbroken.”
“The conclusions of this study have humbled, frightened, and devastated us in the WHO,” Matshidiso Moeti said at a news conference.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization, described the commission’s report as a “harrowing reading.”
The WHO employed 21 of the 83 alleged perpetrators, and the crimes, which included nine allegations of rape, were committed by both national and international workers, according to the panel.
According to the investigation, the victims “weren’t supplied with the necessary support and assistance required for such terrible situations.”
During the 2018-2020 Ebola outbreaks, more than 50 women accused relief workers from the WHO and big NGOs of demanding sex in exchange for jobs, according to a report published last year by the Thomson Reuters Foundation and The New Humanitarian.
Congo’s government declared the two-year outbreak, which killed over 2,200 people and was the second-largest Ebola outbreak since the virus was discovered in 1976, finished in June of last year.
