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THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANISATION (WHO) today declared the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo a “public health emergency of international concern,” a rare designation only used for the gravest epidemics.
“It is time for the world to take notice,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement, as he accepted the advice of his advisory board to invoke the emergency provision (PHEIC), only used by the UN health agency four times previously.
Those included the H1N1, or swine flu, pandemic of 2009, the spread of poliovirus in 2014, the Ebola epidemic that devastated parts of West Africa from 2014 to 2016 and the surge of the Zika virus in 2016.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said it “welcomed” the decision.
“While it does not change the reality on the ground for victims or partners engaged in the response, we hope it will bring the international attention that this crisis deserves,” the IFRC said in a statement.
The WHO’s international health regulations, drafted in 2005, say that the international emergency label should apply to a situation that is “serious, unusual or unexpected; carries implications for public health beyond the affected State’s national border; and may require immediate international action”.
More than 1,600 people have died from Ebola since August 1, when the haemorrhagic virus erupted in DR Congo’s North Kivu and spread to neighbouring Ituri.
I’d rather have ebola coco pops :)
@Hardly Normal:
Priceless!
Here’s a passage from Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter. She almost died of the 1918 Flu, she describes her own experience, an experience perhaps similar to those lucky few who survive Ebola:
“Silenced, Miranda sank easily through deeps upon deeps of darkness, until she lay like a stone at the farthest bottom of life, knowing herself to be blind, deaf, speechless, no longer aware of the members of her own body, entirely withdrawn from all human concerns, yet alive with a peculiar lucidity and coherence. All notions of the mind, the reasonable inquiries of doubt, all ties of blood and desires of the heart, dissolved and fell away from her, and there remained only a minute, fiercely burning particle of being that knew itself alone, that relied upon nothing beyond itself for its strength, not susceptible to any appeal or inducement, being itself composed entirely of one single motive, the stubborn will to live.
This fiery, motionless particle set itself unaided to resist destruction, to survive, and to be in its own madness of being, motiveless and planless, beyond that one essential end. She felt, without warning, a vague tremor of apprehension, some small flick of distrust in her joy. A thin frost touched the edges of this confident tranquility. Something, somebody was missing. She’d lost something. She had left something valuable in another country. What could it be?
‘There are no trees, no trees here,’ she said in fright. ‘I’ve left something unfinished.’ A thought struggled at the back of her mind, came clearly as a voice in her ear. ‘Where are the dead? We’ve forgotten the dead. The dead, where are they?’ At once, as if a curtain had fallen, the bright landscape faded. She was alone in a strange stony place of bitter cold, picking her way along a steep path of slippery snow, calling out, ‘Oh I must go back. But in what direction?’
Pain returned, a terrible compelling pain, running through her veins like heavy fire. The stench of corruption filled her nostrils. The sweetish, sickening smell of rotting flesh and pus. She opened her eyes and saw pale light through a coarse white cloth over her face, and she knew that the smell of death was in her own body, and she struggled to lift her hand.”
I hope this instils some empathy for those who contract Ebola.
Poor Congolese, it’s been a rough century for them. If it’s not a king trying to enslave them it’s wars, now it’s a horrible disease like that.
Are they burying the people in the picture? RIP. Hope it can be contained.
WHO says it????….the World Health Organisation is WHO!!!!
@Brian Lehane: brilliant. I must think of clever puns and wordplays for the next article about people dying in large numbers.
And the cause is… Eating bats…
@TamuMassif2019: Hot Zone by Richard Preston
Compelling read
@Means of escape: yup. The only book to truly terrify Stephen King.
This is getting out of hand & first world will only act when white people DIE
@Martin Sinnott: Or when Facebook is down too long…
@Martin Sinnott:
Actually the first world has had ebola control programmes in place in Africa for many years now, but I suppose that doesn’t suit your narrative.
One of the biggest problems they face is lack of trust amongst local populations, caused in part by the anti-vaxxer movement in the west. Anti-vaxxers yet again excelling themselves in causing hundreds of needless deaths.
@Martin Sinnott: Is that why quite a few of those who have been sent or volunteered to help have been murdered by locals ?
That particular part of Congo has been in lawless chaos since the end of the war and genocide in Ruanda in the ’90′s.
In the meantime it’s also one of the most prominent areas for rare resources to be mined for our precious smart phones and tablets.
Combine lawlessness, ignorance, conflict and greed with the spreading outbreak of a lethal epidemic disease and you’re looking at a fine mess indeed.
Hasn’t spread to a Western nation yet. After a few white people get infected, just like last time, the world will kick into action again.
@Mark V: an unnecessary racist comment and quite insulting to the volunteers and staff of various ethnicities together working to combat this terrible disease.
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