West Africa’s Ebola epidemic is an “extraordinary event” and now constitutes an international health risk, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday.
The Geneva-based U.N. health agency said the possible consequences of a further international spread of the outbreak, which has killed almost 1,000 people in four West African countries, were “particularly serious” in view of the virulence of the virus.
“A coordinated international response is deemed essential to stop and reverse the international spread of Ebola,” the WHO said in a statement after a two-day meeting of its emergency committee on Ebola. The declaration of an international emergency will have the effect of raising the level of vigilance for transmission of the virus.
The agency added that while all states with Ebola transmission – so far Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone – should declare a national emergency, there should be no general ban on international travel or trade.
Keiji Fukuda, the WHO’s head of health security, stressed that, with the right steps and measures to deal with infected people, Ebola’s spread could be stopped.
“This is not a mysterious disease. This is an infectious disease that can be contained,” he told reporters on a telephone briefing from the WHO’s Geneva headquarters. “It is not a virus that is spread through the air.”
The WHO said the current outbreak was the most severe in the almost 40 years since Ebola was first identified in humans.
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