WHO head ‘deeply concerned’ by Ebola outbreak as cases and deaths surge in DRC

The director general of the World Health Organization has said he is deeply concerned about the scale and the speed of the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo . Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said there had been at least 500 suspected cases of Ebola and 130 suspected deaths in DRC since the new outbreak began. Thirty cases had been confirmed in DRC’s north-eastern province of Ituri, and one death and one case had been confirmed in Kampala, Uganda, he added. A US citizen has also tested positive and been transferred to Germany. “These numbers will change as field operations are scaling up, including strengthening surveillance, contact tracing and laboratory testing,” Tedros told members of the World Health assembly, who are meeting this week in Geneva. Tedros declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern in the early hours of Sunday morning. On Tuesday he said: “This is the first time a director general has declared a PHEIC before convening an emergency committee. I did not do this lightly … I’m deeply concerned about the scale and speed of the epidemic.” The WHO will convene its emergency committee on Tuesday to advise what recommendations it should make on how to control the outbreak. The US officially left the WHO in January in a move Donald Trump said was motivated by the organisation’s poor management of the Covid-19 pandemic. …