The World Health Organization said Monday its experts will meet this week to determine whether an Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo constitutes a global health emergency.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has convened “an emergency committee” on the current outbreak in DRC’s violence-torn North Kivu region, which has killed 135 people since August, the UN health agency said in a statement.
“The committee will meet on October 17 in Geneva to ascertain whether the outbreak constitutes a public health emergency of international concern,” the statement said.
In the WHO’s parlance, “a public health emergency of international concern” is an “extraordinary event” in which a disease may spread across borders and requires a vigorous international response.
The agency first invoked the emergency mechanism in 2009 when a new strain of influenza, so-called H1N1 swine flu, emerged. It was also declared twice in 2014, when polio re-emerged after the disease was nearly eradicated, and after an Ebola epidemic struck three West African countries.
Then in 2016, a global emergency was declared in response to an outbreak of the Zika virus. Monday’s announcement came after DRC Health Minister Oly Ilunga warned over the weekend that a second wave of the Ebola virus had been confirmed in the outbreak in North Kivu, which is home to a clutch of armed groups. He said the second wave occurred as a result of community resistance to measures taken to tackle the disease, describing the outbreak as “high risk.”
Published in Daily Times, October 16th 2018.
