For the third time, WHO declines to declare ebola emergency

For the third time, the World Health Organization declined on Friday to declare the ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo a public health emergency, though the outbreak spread this week into neighbouring Uganda and ranks as the second deadliest in history.

An expert panel advising the WHO advised against it because the risk of the disease spreading beyond the region remained low and declaring an emergency could have backfired. Other countries might have reacted by stopping flights to the region, closing borders or restricting travel, steps that could have damaged Congo’s economy.

Preben Aavitsland, a Norwegian public health expert who served as the acting chairman of the emergency committee advising the WHO. said there was “not much to be gained but potentially a lot to lose.”

At the same time, the committee of 10 infectious disease experts said in a statement that it was “deeply disappointed” that donor nations have not given as much money as the WHO and affected nations need to battle the outbreak.

But some global health experts have argued in recent months that the WHO should declare an emergency to bring the world’s attention to the ebola crisis. Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, a health foundation based in London, said on Friday that such a declaration would have strengthened efforts to control the outbreak.

“It would have raised the levels of international political support and enhanced diplomatic, public health, security and logistic efforts,” he said.

Tedros Adhanom Gebreyesus, the WHO director-general, accepted the committee’s recommendation, saying that, even if the outbreak did not meet the criteria for an emergency declaration, “for the affected families this is very much an emergency.”

The WHO has requested $98 million for its response and has received only $44 million. In an interview before the announcement, Tedros said it had recently received commitments from Britain, the United States and Germany.

“We’ve never seen an outbreak like this,” he said. “It happened in a chronic war zone and overlapped with an election that politicised the whole situation. Militia attacks kept interrupting the operations, and when that happens, the virus gets a free ride.”

With more than 2,100 infected and 1,400 dead, the outbreak centered in eastern Congo is surpassed only by the 2013-16 West Africa outbreak in which more than 28,000 were infected and 11,000 died.

Supplies of the ebola vaccine are running low, Tedros said, but Merck agreed Thursday to reopen its plant and make more. To stretch supplies until those arrive, doses are being split and a new Johnson & Johnson vaccine will be rolled out soon, he said.

The outbreak began in August and defied early expectations that it would be contained quickly.

© 2019 The New York Times News Service