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Ebola Outbreak Declared Global Health Emergency
Submitted via IRC for Bytram
Ebola outbreak declared global health emergency
The World Health Organization has declared the Ebola crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo a "public health emergency of international concern". The move may encourage wealthy donor countries to provide more cash.
But the WHO stopped short of saying borders should be closed, saying the risk of the disease spreading outside the region was not high.
The outbreak in DR Congo has killed more than 1,600 people. This week, the first case was detected in Goma, home to more than a million. The PHEIC emergency provision is the highest level of alarm the WHO can sound and has only been used four times previously. This includes the Ebola epidemic that devastated parts of West Africa from 2014 to 2016, and killed more than 11,000 people.
"It is time for the world to take notice," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference in Geneva on Wednesday at which the emergency was declared. He said he accepted recommendations there should be no restrictions on travel or trade, and no entry screening of passengers at ports or airports outside the immediate region.
"While it does not change the reality on the ground for victims or partners engaged in the response, we hope it will bring the international attention that this crisis deserves," it said in a statement.
WHO Declares Ebola Outbreak an International Emergency
From WHO declares Ebola outbreak an international emergency
The World Health Organization on Wednesday declared the nearly year-long Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).
The outbreak was declared on August 1, 2018 and has tallied 2,512 cases and 1,676 deaths. So far, it's centered in the DRC's North Kivu and Ituri provinces, which are on the eastern side of the country bordering South Sudan, Uganda, and Rwanda.
The declaration Wednesday follows the spread of Ebola to Goma, a DRC city of nearly 2 million people at the border with Rwanda that acts as hub of regional transportation. On Sunday, health workers there confirmed the city's first case in a 47-year-old pastor who had just arrived from Butembo, a DRC city that has struggled with the outbreak since last December.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies welcomed the move.
Previously: Measles is Killing More People in the DRC than Ebola-and Faster
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Thursday July 18 2019, @06:53PM (3 children)
So, uhhhhhhmmmmm, we should have been prepared for this invasion, by having millions of air conditioned homes available for them? Treated as livestock? Let me tune up the world's smallest violin, and I'll play them a tune. We owe those people nothing. Just as I owe a trespasser on my land nothing, we owe those people nothing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 18 2019, @07:49PM (1 child)
If you detain someone then yes, you owe them humanitarian conditions. You are a terrible person. Like irredeemable at this point.
Did you just do a search/replace of "good" and "evil" in your brain? Humanity is one big family, but I guess that doesn't pass your tribal nature. I'll get a good laugh next time you accuse someone of identity / tribal politics.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @02:26AM
It's a guilty conscience. He knows what whites have done to the rest of the world, and now he's afraid of it happening to him to the point refugees the US itself is responsible for creating become an "invasion" by "military age males."
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday July 18 2019, @09:17PM
As I said, if you would see them as human beings conversation could be easier. May you never collapse on somebody else's land (or in public) and they look at you and say, "I owe you nothing. Die."
But the better reason is this: "The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons." - Dostoyevsky.
This sig for rent.