WHO declares international emergency for Ebola epidemic, here’s what it means

JUNIOR D. KANNAH / AFP

WHO declares international emergency for Ebola epidemic, here’s what it means. (illustrative photo of caregivers in the DRC during a previous epidemic in 2018)

The World Health Organization (WHO) is sounding the alarm. The UN institution triggered its second highest international alert level this Sunday, May 17, in the face of an Ebola epidemic which, caused by a highly lethal variant without a vaccine, is hitting the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) hard.

According to a press release published on X by the WHO, its director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus ruled that the virus “Constitutes a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), but does not meet the criteria for a pandemic emergency.”.

The PHEIC was previously the highest alert level for an outbreak under the International Health Regulations (IHR), a legally binding framework for states parties to the WHO. But amendments adopted in June 2024 introduced a higher degree of alert: that of« urgence due à une pandémie ».

A region with intense population movements

Ebola, which causes an extremely contagious hemorrhagic fever, remains formidable despite recent vaccines and treatments, effective only against the Zaire strain which causes the largest epidemics recorded. The last time the WHO triggered the PHEIC was in 2022 and 2024 in the face of outbreaks of monkeypox.

In his press release, the director of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus mentions in particular a spread of the virus which has already crossed borders, “ with two confirmed cases reported in Kampala (Uganda) on May 15 and 16, following travel from the DRC ”. “Neighboring countries sharing land borders with the Democratic Republic of Congo are considered at high risk of spread due to population mobility, trade and travel, and ongoing epidemiological uncertainties“, he explains further.

The province of Ituri, in the north-east of the DRC, hit hard by the Bundibugyo variant of Ebola, against which there is no vaccine or treatment, is a gold-producing region bordering Uganda and South Sudan, and which is therefore experiencing intense population movements linked to the activity mining.

USPPI Criteria and Recommendations

To determine the PHEIC, the WHO bases itself on several criteria of the international health regulations, namely information provided by the State concerned, the opinion of the Emergency Committee, scientific principles, as well as available scientific evidence and other relevant information, and finally an assessment of the risk for human health and the risk of international spread.

This trigger immediately implies a set of temporary recommendations which are not legally binding. They expire automatically three months after their publication.

Among the first recommendations of the WHO, raising awareness among all intermediaries (local, religious and traditional leaders and healers), “so that communities play a central role in case identification, contact tracing and risk awareness“. He also calls for strengthening infection controls in health facilities, on roads and at borders. An emergency committee will meet soon to make further recommendations.

As of May 16, WHO confirmed eight laboratory cases and recorded 246 suspected cases and 80 suspected deaths. A case was also confirmed this Sunday, May 17 in Goma, which is home to an international airport. The virus, which is transmitted through bodily fluids, has killed more than 15,000 people in Africa over the past 50 years. In previous outbreaks, the mortality rate has fluctuated between 25% and 90%, but with this strain the case fatality rate can be as high as 50%.. The Bundibugyo variant has caused only two epidemics in the world to date, in Uganda in 2007 (42 deaths out of 131 confirmed cases) and in the DRC in 2012 (13 deaths out of 38 confirmed cases).