For only the third time in medical history, the World Health Organization is declaring an international public health emergency as the most virulent outbreak of the Ebola virus continues to rage in West Africa. They are now urging countries worldwide to donate whatever resources they can to help stop the spread of the virus.
The Ebola virus has struck before, but this current outbreak is the longest running and most widespread upsurge of the hemorrhagic fever on record. The death rate has now escalated to over 900 people in several countries within the region. The first cases were recorded in Guinea last March and house, since then, spread to neighboring countries Liberia and Sierra Leone, with the cases now suspected in nearby Nigeria.
"Countries affected to date simply do not have the capacity to manage an outbreak of this size and complexity on their own. I urge the international community to provide this support on the most urgent basis possible." Said WHO Chief, Dr. Margaret Chan. She added that the "collective health security" of the world depends on the global capacity to stop the spread of the killer virus and contain the infection in West Africa. The WHO has earlier acknowledged that many countries around the world do not have any Ebola cases. They have also already commissioned an expert committee to give a more accurate assessment of the severity of the ongoing Ebola epidemic. Apart from this current outbreak, the agency has only declared a similar emergency for the swine flu pandemic that occurred in 2009 and, more recently, for the polio virus just this year in May.
The declaration, however, is still unclear to some health professionals since a similar proclamation was recently made for polio, but there is still no apparent slowing down of the spread of the said paralytic virus.
Dr. David Heymann, a former WHO lead respondent to the SARS outbreak said, " I don't know what the advantage is a declaring an international emergency. This could bring in more foreign aid but we don't know that yet," while Dr. Bart Janssens, director of operations for the Doctors Without Borders charity was also quoted as saying, "Statements won't save lives. For weeks, [we] have been repeating that massive medical, epidemiological and public health response is desperately needed... Lives are being lost because the response is too slow."
