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The Associated PressGENEVA (AP) – The deadly outbreak of Ebola in Congo has become an international health emergency, the World Health Organization said Wednesday after confirming a case in a city of 2 million inhabitants.
A WHO expert committee has already three times refused to advise the UN health agency to make a statement on the outbreak, despite other experts saying it has been fulfilling for a long time the required conditions. More than 1,600 people have died since the month of August in the second Ebola outbreak, the deadliest in history, which takes place in a region designated as a war zone.
The declaration of a global health emergency often attracts more attention and assistance from the international community, as well as concerns that nervous governments may overreact to border closures.
The statement comes just days after the confirmation of a single case in Goma, a major regional hub in northeastern Congo on the Rwandan border, with an international airport. In addition, a sick Congolese fish trader went to Uganda and returned there while he was symptomatic – and later died of the Ebola virus.
While the risk of regional spread remains high, the risk outside the region remains low, said the head of the WHO, Adedom Adhanom Ghebreyesus, after the announcement made in Geneva.
The international emergency "should not be used to stigmatize or penalize the very people who need our help the most," he said. Tedros insisted that the statement was not made to raise more money – even though the WHO believed it would take "hundreds of millions" of dollars to curb l & # 39; outbreak.
Dr. Joanne Liu, President of Doctors Without Borders, said she hoped that this emergency designation would result in a radical resetting of efforts to fight the Ebola virus.
"In fact, one year into the epidemic, the epidemic is still not under control and we are not where we should be," she said. "We can not continue to do the same thing and hope for different results."
Liu said immunization strategies should be expanded and more efforts should be made to build trust in communities.
The US Agency for International Development welcomed the WHO decision and said USAID officials would continue "to increase support for saving lives" to end the epidemic.
It is the fifth statement of its kind in history. Previous emergencies had been declared following the devastating 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa that had claimed the lives of more than 11,000 people, with the emergence of Zika in the Americas, the swine flu pandemic and polio.
WHO defines a global emergency as an "extraordinary event" that poses a risk to other countries and requires a coordinated international response. Last month, the outbreak spread for the first time to the other side of the border when a family introduced the virus in Uganda after attending the burial in the Congo of ###################################################################### 39, an infected parent. Even in this case, the committee of experts advised against a statement.
Alexandra Phelan, a global health expert at the Georgetown University Law Center, said Wednesday's statement was long overdue.
"This essentially encourages the international community to strengthen its appropriate financial and technical support," she said, but cautioned that countries should be wary of travel or trade restrictions.
Such restrictions "would in fact limit the flow of goods and health workers in the affected countries, so that they would be counterproductive," she said. Future emergency declarations could be perceived as a punishment and "could result in other countries not reporting outbreaks in the future, which puts us all at greater risk" .
WHO had been severely criticized for its slow response to the outbreak in West Africa, to which it has consistently refused to declare a global emergency until the virus spreads explosively. in three countries and nearly 1,000 people died. Internal documents later showed that WHO was being held partly out of fear that a statement would upset the countries involved and hurt their economies.
The emergency committee of the organization will meet again within three months to assess the situation. Committee members will consider whether the epidemic is still a global emergency and if further action is needed.Speech
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