WHO declares Ebola outbreak a health emergency
NAIROBI, Kenya — The World Health Organization took the rare step Wednesday of classifying an ongoing Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo as a “public health emergency of international concern,” just days after a first case of the virus was confirmed in the major city of Goma, on the border with Rwanda.
The last time the global health body declared an international emergency for Ebola was during the 2014-16 outbreak in West Africa that killed more than 11,000 people. The designation means this outbreak qualifies for a higher level of global vigilance and mobilization to stem its spread.
Ebola began spreading in Congo’s conflict-ridden North Kivu province last summer and has infected more than 2,500 people and killed nearly 1,700, according to official Health Ministry figures.
The WHO declaration represents its highest level of alert. It is invoked in response to only the most dire threats and has been issued just four times before. The first time was in 2009 during the H1N1 influenza epidemic that is believed to have infected up to 200 million people worldwide; the second in May 2014 when a paralyzing form of polio reemerged in Pakistan and Syria; the third in August 2014 in the Ebola epidemic that devastated West Africa; and the fourth in February 2016 in the Zika epidemic in Brazil.
The decision was made by a committee of 10 scientists who had three times earlier declined to issue the declaration for the current outbreak.
The committee said delays in funding had constrained the response and hoped the declaration would add to the international community’s sense of urgency. But members also cautioned against using the declaration to impose punitive travel restrictions on countries in the affected area.
The declaration should not be used “as an excuse to impose trade or travel restrictions, which would have a negative impact on the response and on the lives and livelihoods of people in the region,” said Robert Steffen, chairman of the Emergency Committee.
That a case of Ebola would be confirmed in Goma had been a major concern since the beginning of the outbreak, given the city’s size and that tens of thousands cross the nearby border with Rwanda on foot every day. The patient ended up being a Goma-based pastor who had gone to Butembo, another city of more than a million, near the outbreak’s epicenter. He died Tuesday, and WHO officials are tracing dozens of contacts he made.
A new vaccine had some success in slowing the Ebola outbreak. But the rate of infections has increased recently, and health workers worry that some cases are going unreported, making the virus’s spread harder to contain. Attacks by armed groups and violent pushback from locals frustrated by the ubiquitous presence of health workers have forced the international response to pause from time to time, allowing the outbreak to grow.
There have been about 200 attacks on health workers since January alone, and seven have been killed.