The decision by the World Health Organization to declare the Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo an international emergency is intended to boost the world’s response to the outbreak, which continues to spread almost a year after the first victims were identified.
More than 2,500 cases of Ebola have been detected since the first patient presented symptoms in August last year and almost 1,600 people have died, making the epidemic the second-biggest in history and the longest and deadliest of Congo’s ten outbreaks so far.
“It is time for the world to take notice and redouble our efforts,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, said late on Wednesday as the Geneva-based organisation announced its decision. This was only the fifth time that the WHO had declared a public health emergency of international concern, the most severe level of health crisis.