On July 17, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the second worst Ebola outbreak of all time was formally proclaimed an global public health emergency of global concern.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said that this implies that all nations should “take note and redouble their attempts.”
“It is time to work together in solidarity with the DRC to end this outbreak,” said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
The announcement was produced when DRC reported more than 2,500 instances of infection and almost 1,670 died. That’s a mortality rate of 67 percent, while DRC reports about 80 fresh instances weekly.
The WHO, which had rejected calls to declare the emergency at three previous meetings, said it was moved by recent confirmed cases, including one in Goma, a town of nearly two million people on the Rwandan border, and the gateway to the rest of the DRC and the world. However, according to the WHO, at domestic and regional level, the threat of Ebola continues very high but still low at worldwide level.
The WHO has warned that the most at danger are the neighboring nations of Rwanda, South Sudan, Burundi, and Uganda, while the Central African Republic, Angola, Tanzania, the Republic of Congo, and Zambia are in second place.
According to WHO’s International Health Regulations, which constitute a binding legal agreement involving 196 countries across the globe, a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) is defined as, “an extraordinary event which is determined to constitute a public health risk to other States through the international spread of disease and to potentially require a coordinated international response”.
This definition means a circumstance that is: serious, sudden, uncommon or unexpected, carries public health consequences beyond the national border of the impacted State, and may require instant international action.
More funds expected
It is anticipated that the choice will result in more financing being raised in the sector for the reaction teams as global aid increases.
“The cheapest strategy is to invest fully at this point and to stop the current outbreak rather than to under-invest now and have the outbreak linger over a longer timeframe and possibly spread further geographically,” said Mark Lowcock, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator on July 15 in Geneva.
The decision of the WHO will also offer more flexibility to the Ministry of Health of the DRC to guarantee that reaction teams reach even the most remote regions.
According to Yap Boum, professor at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Science and Technology at Mbarara, there is a need for more means to ensure that teams can participate communities. Part of this is to ensure that they have access to the logistics, particularly in the most distant locations.
But he tells the choice of the WHO is not a silver bullet to end the outbreak of Ebola.
He says that the outbreak in a war conflict zone and in major Beni and Goma cities can not be solved with a technical solution, such as more financing.
He claims the unrest problem in North Kivu needs to be resolved as it remains one of this outbreak’s main catalysts.
“Solving the outbreak requires a peaceful environment, wherein the community trusts the Ebola response team, and therefore, increases its engagement,” he said in an article in `The Conversation’, “Without higher community awareness and engagement, it is difficult to see the end of Ebola outbreak in the DRC.”
Since significant attempts by the tireless Ebola reaction teams have failed to decrease new instances of infection, community engagement, surveillance, vaccination, and communication, Prof. Yap Boum said that individuals are still avoiding going to Ebola therapy centers for care. Although over 100,000 individuals were vaccinated, the spread has also not been prevented.
Since January, around 200 assaults have taken place on health centres and employees, with seven individuals being murdered in the violence to date. Dr. Richard Mouzoko was murdered in April, an epidemiologist working for the WHO, and hospitals were torched.
According to WHO, it appears in another region just when health employees begin to get control of the virus and each assault sets teams back.
“Every attack makes it more difficult to trace contacts, vaccinate and perform safe burials,” Tedros said.
He said more than 161,000 people were vaccinated despite the complexity of the challenge, 140,000 contacts were tracked and 71 million travelers were screened at a cost of $250 million “and counting.”
The outbreak was proclaimed on August 01, 2018 in the North Kivu area of the DRC and has since been categorized by WHO as a Level 3 emergency – the most severe – causing the greatest stage of mobilizationThe UN has also recognized the seriousness of the emergency by activating the “Humanitarian System-wide Scale-Up” to promote the reaction to Ebola . But the WHO commission also said it was disappointing that latest delays had occurred in obtaining more global resources to combat the disease, which had restricted the reaction.