‘Congo’s Ebola not a world emergency’

The Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo can be brought under control and is not an international public health emergency, experts advising the World Health Organization said on Friday.

Earlier in the day the WHO had said the first confirmation of Ebola in Mbandaka, a city of about 1.5 million people, had prompted it to declare a “very high” public health risk to the country and a “high” risk to the region.

Three new cases of Ebola were later confirmed in Mbandaka on Friday, in a part of the city next to the Congo River. The ministry said on Friday that the new cases had been reported on Thursday in the neighbourhood of Wangata, next to the river, and samples tested positive for Ebola. Another suspected case surfaced on Friday. The outbreak, Congo’s ninth since the disease made its first known appearance near the northern Ebola river in the 1970s, has raised concerns that the virus could spread downstream to the capital Kinshasa, which has a population of 10 million. The WHO’s Emergency Committee of 11 experts said the rapid response had mitigated the risk from the outbreak, which was declared 10 days ago and has killed 25 people since early April. “Interventions underway provide strong reason to believe that the outbreak can be brought under control,” the committee said in a statement. They decided not to declare a “public health emergency of international concern”, a formal alert that puts governments on notice and helps mobilise resources and research.