The announcement was made after Africa’s leading public health authority reported that an outbreak of the Bundibugyo species of Ebola in a province in the northeast of Congo was linked to dozens of suspected deaths.
By Saturday, cases had also been confirmed in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, the W.H.O. said.
In Congo’s Ituri province, where the outbreak was first identified, 246 suspected cases and 80 deaths attributed to the virus had been reported, although only eight cases had been definitively linked to the virus through laboratory testing. There is no approved vaccine and no therapeutics for the Bundibugyo species of Ebola behind the outbreak, according to the W.H.O.
Scale of Fresh Ebola Outbreak
The scale of the outbreak could be far larger than has been detected and reported, the W.H.O. said in declaring a “public health emergency of international concern.” It added that there were “significant uncertainties” about the precise number of people infected and the “geographic spread.”
The W.H.O.’s declaration signals a public health risk requiring a coordinated international response, and is intended to prompt member countries to prepare for the virus to spread and to share vaccines, treatments and other resources needed to contain the outbreak.
In Kampala, two confirmed cases, including one death, were not apparently linked, but they were identified within 24 hours of one another in people who had traveled from Congo, the agency said. The Ugandan authorities had earlier said they had identified a single case of a 59-year-old Congolese man who was admitted to a hospital in Kampala on May 11 and died three days later.
The agency initially said a case was also confirmed in Kinshasa, Congo’s capital, involving a person returning from Ituri, but on Sunday revised that information and said the individual had tested negative for the Bundibugyo species of Ebola.
The risk of the outbreak spreading is exacerbated by a humanitarian crisis, high population mobility and a large network of informal health care facilities in the area, the agency said.
