MOSCOW, Russia: World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said there is a need to urgently strengthen the response to the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) amid its accelerated spread, reported Sputnik/RIA Novosti.
“I am in Kinshasa, DRC, and have met with our health and humanitarian partners supporting the Ebola response to discuss the challenges we face.
“As the outbreak is spreading faster than our scale up of the response, with new cases doubling in some hotspots over the past week alone. We all agree that we must urgently and massively scale up all our efforts across all pillars of the response and by all partners,” Ghebreyesus said on the social media paltform X on Wednesday.
According to the WHO chief, this means helping every affected community, despite security concerns and population displacement.
“That means reaching every affected community despite insecurity and displacement, strengthening coordination under the Government’s leadership, ensuring health workers have the protection, training and support they need, and accelerating access to care, surveillance and safe, dignified burials,” he added.
On May 17, the WHO declared the Ebola outbreak in the DRC and Uganda a public health emergency of international concern. The WHO assesses the regional risk of the virus spreading as high.
On Saturday, the WHO said that the Ebola virus is rapidly spreading in the DRC, making it the largest outbreak in history.
According to the latest data from the DRC Health Ministry, the number of confirmed Ebola cases in the country has increased to 3,748, with 1,657 deaths. – BERNAMA-SPUTNIK/RIA NOVOSTI
