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Ebola Outbreak Declared Global Health Emergency
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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: 3, Insightful) by Dr Spin on Friday July 19 2019, @07:43AM
even if all flights and ships from Africa were blocked.
A large part of the population is completely disconnected from urbanised life. For thousands of years, they
have travelled in small boats by river or sea, or by camel over land, for weeks, with no concern for governments,
which mostly lack skill, resources or any kind of good intention, and you may understand how this view is
sufficiently westernised to lack any grip on reality.
or, for Americans:
Imagine you are the Trump government, and you have to round up people in remote parts of Appalachia
and explain to them that they are in danger from aliens who escaped from Area 51. Now think of Appalachia
being as big as USA + Canada, with the entire US government played by Chuck Norris and Will Smith,
led by Homer Simpson, and then multiply the problems by 10.
When you say tribe, in this context, you mean "immediate family".
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!