Ebola: a crisis in global health leadership

The Ebola epidemic will take hundreds of thousands of lives if the current trajectory is not reversed.1 Fear has gripped the most affected countries: Sierra Leone instituted a national lockdown,2 Liberia cordoned off swathes of territory,3 and in Guinea, panicked residents in one village killed a team that had come to raise awareness about the disease.4 WHO, with its budget and capacity to respond diminished, has largely been sidelined in the response to Ebola. In a leadership vacuum, high-income countries sent in military assets, the UN Security Council declared Ebola a threat to international peace and security, and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon created a special UN mission. How did this situation arise, and what will it take to bring Ebola under control and prevent future crises? The answers lie in failures of leadership.