(NewYorkTimes) - The Ebola epidemic that killed thousands of people in West Africa is no longer an international public health emergency, the World Health Organization announced on Tuesday.
Dr. Margaret Chan, the director general of the W.H.O., said in a news briefing that she was accepting the recommendation of an emergency committee, which concluded that West African countries had the ability to contain the small number of new cases that continued to arise, and that “the likelihood of international spread is low.”
Dr. Chan called on nations that had imposed restrictions on interaction with the three countries to “immediately lift any ban on travel and trade.”
The Ebola outbreak, ignited in Guinea in December 2013, ultimately sickened more than 28,000 people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, killing more than 11,300. But the W.H.O. said in a statement that all three countries had made it successfully through a 42-day observation period and a 90-day surveillance period without any cases linked to the original transmission chain for the virus. The last country to achieve that status was Guinea, which completed the 90-day period two days ago.
“The original Ebola outbreak has come to an end. The original chains of transmission are terminated now,” said Dr. Robert Steffen, a communicable disease expert who is vice chairman of the W.H.O. emergency committee.
Still, flare-ups of cases continue, an expected consequence that has occurred with other Ebola outbreaks, W.H.O. officials said. The most recent is a cluster in Guinea of five confirmed and three probable cases, which the W.H.O. said it was treating as a moderate-level crisis. In all, there have been 12 new clusters of cases in the three countries since the original transmission chains were extinguished, but they have been occurring less frequently, the W.H.O. said. (Full Story)
No comments:
Post a Comment