A joint panel of experts from the World Health Organization and South Korea said Saturday that the South Korean government's failure in sharing the information with public and not building an efficient disease-control system contributed in worsening country's outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).

The experts in previous weeks visited several hospitals and met with the local health authorities in an attempt to assess the outbreak, which has killed 14 people.

Lee Jong-koo, head of the South Korean side of the joint mission on Saturday said, "One of the things South Korea failed to do was a transparent and rapid distribution of information, which is the most important thing to do".

A failure in establishing proper governance in controlling the outbreak during its early stages also contributed to confusion among the public, said Lee.

As per officials, so far, MERS is known have infected 138 people in South Korea since the first patient was diagnosed on May 20.

The outbreak is the largest to date outside Saudi Arabia, where the virus first emerged in 2012, killing more than 400 people.

It has been said that one of the tasks of the joint mission was to determine who huge number of people were infected in South Korea in a relatively short period of time.

Keiji Fukuda, the panel's chief World Health Organization official, said Saturday that the answer lay in South Korean doctors' unfamiliarity with MERS.

Nearly all of the country's confirmed MERS patients were infected while seeking care or while visiting patients at hospitals; hospital staff members were also infected.