WHO declares global health emergency on Ebola

{"text":[[{"start":8,"text":"The World Health Organization has declared a “public health emergency of international concern” after an outbreak of a rare strain of Ebola in Democratic Republic of Congo spread to the capital Kinshasa and to neighbouring Uganda."}],[{"start":22.65,"text":"The WHO said the spread of the suspected Bundibugyo strain of the deadly haemorrhagic fever had probably begun without detection in March. There are no virus-specific therapeutics or vaccines for that strain."}],[{"start":35.15,"text":"Eight cases of the disease, which has a fatality rate of between 30 and 90 per cent, had been confirmed in laboratories by Saturday. A further 80 suspected deaths and 246 suspected cases have been reported across at least three health zones in the Ituri Province of north-eastern DR Congo."}],[{"start":54.349999999999994,"text":"The high positivity rate of initial samples collected, confirmation of cases in both Kampala, the Ugandan capital, and Kinshasa, and clusters of deaths across the DR Congo province of Ituri “all point towards a potentially much larger outbreak than what is currently being detected and reported,” the WHO said.  "}],[{"start":73.64999999999999,"text":"As such the event constitutes “a public health risk’’ to other states through the international spread of disease, but does not meet the criteria of pandemic emergency. "}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":83.8,"text":"The worst epidemic of Ebola occurred in 2014 in West Africa. It spread across Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Nigeria and claimed the lives of 11,308 of more than 28,000 people who contracted the disease. Travel was disrupted across the continent at the time."}],[{"start":104.69999999999999,"text":"There have been near-annual outbreaks since, but all were contained relatively quickly within DR Congo and, in one instance, Uganda. "}],[{"start":112.89999999999999,"text":"Peter Piot, who helped draw the world’s attention to early cases of Ebola in then-Zaire in 1976, said he was ‘‘pretty worried’’ that this would be a much bigger outbreak."}],[{"start":123.74999999999999,"text":"There were already two unrelated cases in Kampala and one in Kinshasa, the capital of DR Congo. A case had already been detected in Goma, he said, while in Ituri, in eastern Congo, the outbreak was in several clusters, rather than an easier-to-contain “single source outbreak”. "}],[{"start":142.04999999999998,"text":"All that indicated that the disease had already spread significantly, Piot said. "}],[{"start":147.14999999999998,"text":"The fact that four health workers had died, something normally associated with later stages of an outbreak, was cause for further concern, he said. "}],[{"start":156.95,"text":"“Once an outbreak takes hold in one of those megacities that’s going to be a nightmare — that’s my biggest concern,” he said of the fact that it had already reached three big cities. "}],[{"start":166.85,"text":"Piot, a former director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said the fact that the new outbreak was of the Bundibugyo strain made it much more difficult to detect and stop. "}],[{"start":179.2,"text":"Routine diagnostics did not pick up the strain, he said. A lack of treatment or effective vaccines also made it much harder to control the spread of the disease through tried-and-tested methods such as “ring vaccination” when people are immunised in an area surrounding the outbreak, or outbreaks."}],[{"start":195.7,"text":"But Piot said it was worth trying the existing Merck and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, assuming there were sufficient stocks in DR Congo, which was doubtful."}],[{"start":205.25,"text":"Piot said he did not know how much the systems of disease detection and control had been damaged by cuts to western aid, which had deprived some labs of diagnostic equipment and testing kits. But he said the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had played an important role in containing previous outbreaks. “This is a case now where foreign aid is absolutely necessary,” he said."}],[{"start":228.75,"text":"The WHO advised regional states to “urgently enhance their preparedness and readiness capacity’’. "}],[{"start":235.65,"text":"Ebola’s spread comes as officials all over the world have been grappling with cases of a rat-borne hantavirus on a cruise ship that departed from Argentina. That outbreak has so far killed three people. "}],[{"start":254.3,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1779063890_5254.mp3"}