WHO set to declare health emergency

The World Health Organisation (WHO) is expected to declare a Public Health Emergency of International Concern in response to the coronavirus outbreak which appears to have originated in eastern China.

Nine people have died and hundreds of others have been infected, with cases detected in countries including the US, Japan and South Korea as increased precautions are taken to prevent the virus spreading during the busy Lunar New Year.

WHO will issue the emergency declaration for just the fifth time.

SWINE FLU – The first declaration happened in April 2009, with H1N1, or swine flu, spreading around the world and killing more than 200,000 people.

Britain recorded 214 deaths, while 20 people died from swine flu in Ireland.

Initially travellers returning from Mexico, where the virus originated, were met by authorities at the airport and hygiene measures were recommended by the Health Protection Agency.

POLIO – Increased wild polio numbers in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria led to an emergency being declared in May 2014, a remarkable step given that the disease was thought to have been almost eradicated.

There have been no domestic cases of polio in the UK since 1982.

EBOLA–The disease broke out in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, with an emergency declared from August 2014 to March 2016. Almost 30,000 people were infected and more than 11,000 died.

A vaccination programme is under way in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s North Kivu province.

A second emergency was declared, after months of hesitation, last July after it was confirmed that Ebola had spread to Goma, the capital of North Kivu.

ZIKA – The life-threatening virus was first identified in a monkey in Uganda in 1975.

Its spread by mosquitoes in the Americas led the WHO to declare it an emergency from February to November 2016.