GENEVA — The head of the World Health Organization said on Tuesday that he was “deeply concerned about the scale and speed” of the Ebola outbreak spreading in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, as the suspected death toll in Congo climbed to over 130 people.
Laboratory testing has now definitively linked 30 cases to the virus in Congo’s northeastern Ituri Province, where the outbreak was first identified, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the WHO, said in an address to the 79th World Health Assembly.
Health ministers and diplomats are in Geneva for a week of negotiations on key topics such as pandemic preparedness, health financing and how to manage public health across borders to save lives.
The Assembly convened just one day after the WHO chief declared the Ebola outbreak in DR Congo a public health emergency of international concern {PHEIC}.
On Tuesday he said: “This is the first time a director general has declared a PHEIC before convening an emergency committee. I did not do this lightly … I’m deeply concerned about the scale and speed of the epidemic.”
The WHO will convene its emergency committee on Tuesday to advise what recommendations it should make on how to control the outbreak.
Tedros said the deaths of health care workers,high population mobility in the area and the absence of vaccines or therapeutics for the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola behind the outbreak raised fears of further spread and deaths.
Tedros said reports of cases in urban areas, where the virus typically finds it easier to spread, were also cause for concern.
His comments came shortly after the country’s health minister, Dr. Samuel-Roger Kamba, said in a livestreamed news conference that 131 suspected deaths and 513 suspected cases had been linked to the outbreak.
The figures marked a sharp increase from Monday, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said there had been reports of 88 suspected deaths and 336 cases, and 11 confirmed cases in Congo. Two cases had also been confirmed in neighboring Uganda, the CDC said.
Source: Saudi Gazette