The deadly Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo remains an"urgent" global health emergency, The World Health Organization said Friday at its Emergency Committee meeting.
"The public health emergency will be maintained for an additional three months", WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference.The status of a global health emergency is an exceptional measure that has been used by the WHO four times: in 2009 for the Swine flu virus, in 2014 for polio, in 2014 for the Ebola epidemic which killed more than 11,000 in Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone and in 2016 for the Zika virus.
The DRC health ministry said earlier this week Ebola had returned to Ituri province in the north-east of the country after nearly 300 days without any new cases. "The area is a very complex area, it's a very volatile area. We have made very significant progress, the number of cases have plummeted.Since the most recent Ebola outbreak, a vaccine a developed by Merck Sharp and Dohme has been used on more than 230,000 people.