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AFP
Geneva
A deadly Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo is deeply worrying, but does not yet merit being labelled a global health emergency, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.
"Based on the current context... the committee recommended that the current Ebola outbreak in DRC does not constitute a public health emergency of international concern,"said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
"I have accepted the recommendation of the committee,"he told reporters in Geneva following a meeting of the UN agency's International Health Regulations Emergency Committee.
In the WHO's parlance,"a public health emergency of international concern"is an"extraordinary event"in which a disease may spread across borders and requires a vigorous international response.
Tedros stressed though that the decision not to use the label for the epidemic that has killed at least 139 people in DRC's violence-torn North Kivu region since August"does not mean that WHO is not taking the outbreak seriously."
