WHO donors seek deeper probe into Congo sexual abuse - diplomats

FILE PHOTO: WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus attends a news conference after a ceremony for the opening of the WHO Academy, in Lyon, France, September 27, 2021. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

GENEVA (Reuters) - Major Western donors have pressed the World Health Organization to launch a deeper external probe demanding how a major sexual abuse scandal in the Democratic Republic of Congo involving its staff was allowed to happen, diplomats told Reuters.

Some 83 aid workers, a quarter of them employed by the WHO, were involved in sexual exploitation and abuse during the country's Ebola epidemic from 2018 to 2020, an independent commission said last month.