By Kemo Cham
The West African Ebola epidemic is
no longer an international public health emergency, the World Health
Organisation (WHO) has declared on Tuesday.
The UN health agency said the viral
disease outbreak which wrecked Sierra Leone and its neighbors Liberia and
Guinea no longer constituted a public health emergency of international concern
as the first leg of the original transmission had come to an end.
WHO declares an outbreak as an
international health emergency when it is considered a threat to international
public health. The 2014 Ebola outbreak was designated as such in August 2014,
some 20 months ago, when the viral outbreak was at its peak.
Tuesday’s announcement came
following the recommendation from an independent committee of experts which
advices the WHO Director General Dr. Margaret Chan.
“The Committee provided its view
that Ebola transmission in West Africa no longer constitutes an extraordinary
event, that the risk of international spread is now low,
and that countries
currently have the capacity to respond rapidly to new virus emergences,” Chan
said in a statement at a press conference in Geneva.
She said she’d accepted the
recommendations of the committee which also called for lifting of any travel
and trade restrictions affecting the hardest hit countries – Guinea, Liberia
and Sierra Leone.
All the original chains of
transmission in the original outbreak have now come to an end, Professor Robert
Steffen, vice chair of the Emergency Committee, also said at the press
conference held at the headquarters of WHO in Geneva.
The declaration of the epidemic as
international public health emergency saw many countries banning nationals from
Ebola effected countries from entering their territories.
Other countries even went further to
impose stringent screening measures for even their own citizens who travelled
from Ebola affected countries. This move was blamed for causing further
hardship of the affected countries and hindered efforts against the epidemic
due to difficulties in transporting medical volunteers and emergency aids.
Over 28,000 people were infected and
more than 11,000 of them died from the epidemic that began in Guinea early
March 2014.
But despite its declaration, WHO
warned that sporadic flare-ups like the ones seen in all three hard-hit
countries recently were likely to happen for some time. And concerns are on the
Ebola survivors who are thought to pose risk of infecting others through sex.
Before now the virus was thought to
remain in semen of survivors for about nine but the WHO chief said Tuesday
there were new evidence that it can now remain for up to a year.
WHO’s declaration also came just a
few days after Guinea recorded its first flare-up since last December when it
was first declared free of the virus. About five people are reported to have
died from that cluster.
Dr Chan said that such cases will
persist, given the number of survivors in the region. She therefore warned
against complacency towards the virus, which she said remained in “the ecosystem”
in West Africa. She called for vigilance and urged member countries to ensure
rapid reaction in case of any new cases.
“Particularly important will be to
ensure that communities can rapidly and fully engage in any future response,
cases are quickly isolated and managed,” Dr Chan said.
(C) Politico 30/03/16
No comments:
Post a Comment