UN Health Calls Emergency Meeting to Discuss Ebola Outbreak

The head of the World Health Organization is convening a meeting of experts on Wednesday to decide whether the Ebola outbreak should be declared an international emergency after spreading to eastern Congo’s biggest city this week.

This is the fourth time WHO has convened the group to assess this virus outbreak. The committee has repeatedly declined to make such a declaration, which often brings more international attention and aid.

In this photograph taken Saturday 13 July 2019, health workers wearing protective suits tend to to an Ebola victim kept in an isolation cube in Beni, Congo DRC. The Congolese health ministry is confirming the country’s first Ebola case in the provincial capital of 2 million, Goma, some 360 kms ( 225 miles) south of Beni. More than 1,600 people in eastern Congo have died as the virus has spread in areas too dangerous for health teams to access.

Preacher in Congo Inflicted with Disease Has Died

This week a preacher with Ebola was identified after arriving by bus in Goma, a city of more than 2 million people.

WHO now confirms he has died.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus earlier described Ebola’s spread to Goma as a potential “game-changer.” But Congo’s health minister, Dr. Oly Ilunga, insisted the situation was “not a humanitarian crisis.”

(This story is auto-published from a syndicated feed. Only the image has been altered by FIT)