WHO declares Congo Ebola outbreak a global health emergency

Declaration comes days after a single case was confirmed in Goma, a major regional crossroads in northeastern Congo on the Rwanda border

A declaration of a global health emergency often brings greater international attention and aid

3-MIN READ3-MIN

A health worker wearing Ebola protection gear at an Ebola treatment centre in Beni, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. File photo: Reuters

Published: 1:31pm, 18 Jul 2019Updated: 9:34pm, 18 Jul 2019

The World Health Organisation has declared the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo a “public health emergency of international concern”, a rare designation only used for the gravest epidemics.

The year-old Ebola epidemic in eastern DR Congo, the second deadliest on record, has largely been contained to remote areas, but this week saw a patient diagnosed with the virus in provincial capital Goma, the first case in a major urban hub.

“It is time for the world to take notice,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement, as he accepted the advice of his advisory board to invoke the emergency provision, activated by the UN health agency only four times previously.

Those included the H1N1, or swine flu, pandemic of 2009, the spread of poliovirus in 2014, the Ebola epidemic that devastated parts of West Africa from 2014 to 2016 and the surge of the Zika virus in 2016.

The Ebola virus is highly contagious and has an average fatality rate of around 50 per cent.

It is transmitted to humans from wild animals and spreads among people through close contact with the blood, body fluids, secretions or organs of an infected person.