THE handling by senior World Health Organisation staffers of a sexual misconduct case did not violate the agency’s policies because of a “loophole” according to a confidential report.

The investigation was carried out after WHO staff were accused of sexual misconduct during an Ebola outbreak in Congo between 2018 and 2020.

The report, which was submitted to WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus last month and was not released publicly, was obtained by the Associated Press. 

The UN investigation comes after a 2021 review by a panel appointed by Mr Tedros found that three WHO managers botched a sexual misconduct case involving a UN health agency doctor signing a contract to buy land for a young woman he reportedly impregnated.

Last week, Mr Tedros said that UN investigators concluded the “managerial misconduct” charges were unsubstantiated and the three staffers returned to work after being on administrative leave. 

The investigators said that Mr Tedros was informed of the sexual misconduct allegations in 2019 and had been warned of worrying gaps in the WHO’s misconduct policies the previous year.

Among the cases WHO management were warned about was the allegation that Jean-Paul Ngandu, an infection-control specialist sent to Beni, had impregnated a young woman but after the relationship soured the woman complained to the WHO office in Beni about his behaviour. 

“After the allegations were made to WHO headquarters, a decision was made not to investigate the complaint on the basis that it did not violate WHO’s sexual exploitation and abuse policy framework,” the UN report said.

The review said that the woman was not a “beneficiary” of WHO assistance as she did not receive any emergency or humanitarian aid from the agency and so didn’t qualify as a victim under WHO policy.

WHO staffers interviewed by UN investigators said that this might be considered a “loophole which had the potential to cause complaints to fall through the cracks.”

Experts have slammed WHO’s defence.

Irwin Redliner, a global health expert at Columbia University, said: “If these issues were brought to Tedros’s attention and no action was taken, [WHO] member states must demand accountability.”

Larry Gostin, director of the WHO collaborating centre on public health law and human rights at Georgetown University, said: “Escaping accountability based on weasel words and technical language, like not being a ‘beneficiary’ of WHO assistance is unacceptable.”

He said that the excusing of this behaviour based on a “legal technicality shows the UN and WHO are not taking sexual abuse seriously.”