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WHO declares ebola emergency; Congo’s health minister resigns
Last week, the WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared the Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).
The PHEIC emergency provision is the highest level of alarm the WHO can sound and has only been used four times previously. The outbreak in DRC has killed over 1,600 people.
According to a BBC report, the move may encourage wealthy donor countries to provide more cash.
The declaration followed a meeting of the International Health Regulations Emergency Committee for EVD in the DRC. The Committee expressed disappointment about delays in funding which have constrained the response. They also reinforced the need to protect livelihoods of the people most affected by the outbreak by keeping transport routes and borders open.
A report also said that an Ebola patient may have entered Rwanda, suggesting that the deadly virus could spread to Rwanda as well. However, the WHO withdrew that report.
There is a vaccine for Ebola, manufactured by Merck, which is said to be 99 percent effective. It has been given to 170,000 people.
Meanwhile, Oly Ilunga, Congo’s health minister, resigned this week after being stripped of responsibility for managing the country’s Ebola outbreak, potentially paving the way for the introduction of a second vaccine to contain the spreading epidemic.
Ilunga had overseen DRC’s near year-long response to the Ebola outbreak — the second deadliest in history. In his resignation letter, the minister criticized pressure by unnamed “actors” to deploy the second vaccine, manufactured by Johnson & Johnson and backed by the WHO. This vaccine is yet to be used, due to Ilunga’s objections.
Ilunga has said the J&J vaccine has not been proved effective and that deploying a second one would confuse people in eastern Congo, where health workers are struggling to overcome widespread misinformation about the hemorrhagic fever as well as sporadic hostility.
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