U.N. official: Ebola outbreak 'will be gone by the summer'

NEW YORK, March 23 (UPI) -- The head of the United Nations Ebola Mission believes the Ebola outbreak, which killed over 10,000 people last year in West Africa, will soon end.

"We have been running away from giving any specific date, but I am pretty sure myself that it will be gone by the summer," Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed told the BBC.

That prediction, which aligns with that of his predecessor, comes amid heightened scrutiny of the the global response to the health crisis. Doctors without Borders, also known as MSF, was among the first to raise the alarm about the seriousness of the outbreak and has publicly chastised the international community for its slow responsiveness to the outbreak.

In a report released Monday, Joanne Liu, president of Doctors Without Borders, warns "the flexibility and agility for a fast, hands-on emergency response still does not sufficiently exist in the global health and aid systems."

The first confirmed Ebola victim died in Dec. 2013. Three months later, an Ebola outbreak was announced. By August, the outbreak had become "the largest EVD outbreak ever recorded" and the World Health Organization declared a public health emergency.

Treatment centers became overwhelmed and infection of health care workers strained an already inundated medical work force in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Aid workers struggled with outreach and education efforts in communities where there was violent resistance to acknowledging Ebola and understanding how the virus is transmitted and treated.

U.N. special envoy for Ebola Dr. David Nabarro acknowledged that "none of us have ever been involved in anything of this magnitude, complexity and potential severity before."

The outbreak and required response has shed light on the shortcomings in treating the disease on a global scale, admits the U.N.

"The world, including WHO, was too slow to see what was unfolding before us," WHO director general Dr. Margaret Chan, said in February.