Riyadh [Saudi Arabia], July 27 (ANI): Saudi Arabia has suspended issuing visas to pilgrims from the Democratic Republic of the Congo over fears that Ebola could spread during next month's Hajj pilgrimage there.

The Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Wednesday announced the decision in a note cited by Al Jazeera, saying, "The granting of arrivals visas for people entering from DRC has been stopped, to conserve the well-being of pilgrims."

The suspension came after the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared that the Ebola outbreak in Congo's eastern North Kivu and Ituri provinces a public health emergency of international concern.

It was not clear how many people's applications had been affected by the move.

About three per cent of Congo's population is Muslim who had planned to take part in the annual hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia next month.

Riyadh's move came despite the World Health Organisation saying at the time of its international emergency declaration that no country should close its borders or place any restrictions on travel or trade because of Ebola and urging governments elsewhere in Africa and around the world not to "panic" in response to the decision.

The epidemic has killed more than 1,700 people - more than two-thirds of those who contracted it - since it emerged last August, according to the Congo's health ministry. It is the second-worst outbreak of its kind on record.

The Kingdom also suspended pilgrimage visas for travellers from Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia - the three worst-affected countries.

Saudi Arabia also suspended visas during West Africa's Ebola outbreak a few years ago in which more than 11,000 people died. (ANI) </s> The World Health Organisation has declared the Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo a public health emergency of international concern, eleven months after it first began.

More than 1,600 people have died from the virus, making it the second biggest Ebola outbreak in recorded history. Single cases have now reached Goma, a busy city on the Rwandan border, and neighbouring Uganda.

This is only the fifth time the WHO has made this declaration: the others were for swine flu in 2009, a 2014 polio outbreak, the East Africa Ebola outbreak in 2014 and the Zika virus epidemic in 2016.

Making the announcement, chairman of the WHO’s emergency committee Robert Steffen said it was dealing with a “tremendously complex situation”.

While it was still a regional emergency and in no way a global threat, the failure to contain it so far meant the chances of Ebola spreading further were high, he said. “There must be more engagement by the global community to end this outbreak,” he added.

The WHO is not recommending any restrictions on travel or trade being implemented on the DRC’s borders, as such measures could hamper the fight against the virus, rather than helping it, by damaging the economy of the affected regions, it says.

Attempts to contain Ebola have been hampered by an ongoing conflict in eastern DRC – where dozens of armed groups are active.

Congolese communities are also suspicious of the sudden influx of money to what is a long-neglected, traditionally opposition-supporting part of the country, with many rumours circulating that Ebola is fake, or that the government or international organisations are deliberately infecting or even killing people. Other misbeliefs include that aid workers are harvesting the organs of victims.

“The situation is bad,” Aime, a health promoter in Beni, one of the areas affected by the outbreak, told The Irish Times through the messaging service WhatsApp. He said Ebola response workers were regularly attacked and beaten by members of the local community.

Many Congolese people involved in the response are also working on short term or daily contracts. Aime was let go from his job as a WHO hygienist in June after funding ran out.

On Wednesday, Uganda’s Ministry of Health said it was working with the WHO to identify people who had come in contact with a woman who recently travelled to the country to trade in fish while she was contagious with Ebola, before returning to the DRC, where she died.

The woman evaded formal border controls, where travellers have their temperatures checked, highlighting the porous nature of the border. The Ugandan government advised citizens to avoid handshaking, hugging and mass gatherings. </s> It comes after former Tory leadership candidate Rory Stewart demanded Britain send more money to DR Congo to help tackle the Ebola crisis. Mr Stewart, who dropped out of the Tory leadership race when he failed to get enough backing in the early stages, said the UK must “get serious” about the growing threat of Ebola - before the World Health Organisation (WHO) today declared the outbreak an international public health emergency. The International Development Secretary said he has just returned from the Ebola-struck region of Beni and Butembo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and answered questions from fellow Tory MP James Duddridge on what lessons had been learnt “to help countries become more resistant to Ebola particularly in the health sector”.

Mr Stewart said: “There is an Ebola outbreak now in Congo that has already crossed the border to Uganda. “We had an outbreak in Goma (DRC) a city of two million people on Sunday. “If we do not get this under control this, which is already the second biggest Ebola outbreak in history, will cause devastating problems for the region. “We must invest much more in the World Health Organisation (WHO), in developing the public health services in the neighbouring countries and above all step up to the challenge and be serious as a nation about this deadly disease.”

In what could be his last Commons appearance in his current role, Mr Stewart made a bid to increase the number of British civil servants working overseas on development. He said: “The central challenge in international development going forward is going to be the quality, the expertise and the number our permanent staff on the ground. “As international development becomes more complex, with conflict and climate, as we have to work closely with other Government departments, and above all in a world in which countries are looking not for money but for expertise, what we will have to do over the next 15 years is increase the expertise, increase the quality, but above all the number of civil servants moving away from short-term consultants to having British experts on the ground.” Mr Stewart’s criticisms come as health chief’s admitted that Ebola’s first victim in the Congo’s largest city managed to slip through three virus checkpoints.

The WHO today declared the Ebola crisis is a public health emergency after 1,600 have died since the start of a new outbreak. WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: “It is time for the world to take notice and redouble our efforts. We need to work together in solidarity with the DRC to end this outbreak and build a better health system.” </s> • The World Health Organization declared the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo a global health emergency on Wednesday.
• The declaration, which critics say is long overdue, could increase the amount of funding and assistance other countries are willing to provide to the response effort.
• This marks only the fifth time the WHO has declared a public health emergency of international concern.

The World Health Organization declared the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo a global health emergency on Wednesday, a move that is likely to escalate international attention on a crisis that has flared for a year despite aggressive efforts to stamp it out.

The declaration, which critics have contended is long overdue, could increase the amount of funding and assistance other countries are willing to provide to the response effort.

Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared the public health emergency of international concern — known as a PHEIC— as his organization and its partners scramble to contain what they've described as the most challenging outbreak ever and struggled to raise the funding needed to finance the operation. He did so on the recommendation of a panel of outside experts.

The emergency committee had recommended against the declaration of a PHEIC for the outbreak on three previous occasions.

"This is still a regional emergency and by no means a global threat," said the head of the emergency committee, Robert Steffen.

Tedros, as the director-general is known, reconvened the group after health officials discovered Sunday that a man infected with Ebola had traveled to Goma, a city of 2 million south of the outbreak zone. Goma is located near DRC's border with Rwanda and it is a regional transportation hub. The man, a pastor, has since died.

Though there is no indication yet whether the man infected anyone in Goma, the presence of a case there raises serious concerns. It had long been feared that the disease might take root in Goma, and that the city would serve as a launching pad to send cases both to regional neighbors and potentially further afield.

Read more: 1,400 people have died so far in the second largest outbreak of Ebola in history

To date the outbreak has spread broadly within North Kivu and Ituri, two northeastern provinces on DRC's border with Uganda, South Sudan, and Rwanda. But so far only four cases are known to have crossed the border into Uganda. Three members of a family traveling from the funeral of an Ebola victim became ill and went to hospital for care; they were quickly isolated. All three died in early June, but they appear not to have infected anyone in Uganda.

On Wednesday, Uganda's health minister announced an infected woman from DRC crossed into Uganda to sell fish; she later returned to DRC, where she died. Authorities are looking for people who were in contact with her while she was in Uganda so they can be vaccinated.

August 1 marks the first anniversary of the declaration that an outbreak was underway in the DRC. Since then, more than 2,500 cases have been reported and the death toll is approaching 1,700 people.

In that time, nearly 164,000 people have been vaccinated with an experimental Ebola vaccine being developed by Merck. While the WHO credits the vaccine for preventing a larger disaster, the outbreak response has struggled to find a way to bring this outbreak to an end.

Read more: An Ebola outbreak has killed more than 1,000 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and containment efforts are being hampered by armed attacks

The outbreak is occurring in a part of DRC that has been a conflict zone for decades. A United Nation peacekeeping force operates in the area and has had to provide security for outbreak responders who have come under attack from people in the region, some of whom believe Ebola was brought to the region by the outsiders.

Seven people working on the response have been killed, teams trying to conduct safe burials to prevent transmission have been attacked, and Ebola treatment centers have been fire bombed. The violence and the distrust has sharply impeded the outbreak responders' ability to bring the outbreak under control and it's not clear at this point what will swing the trajectory toward a conclusion of the outbreak.

This marks only the fifth time the WHO has declared a public health emergency of international concern. The previous PHEICs were the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic, the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, and the Zika outbreak in Latin America in 2016. Setbacks in the polio eradication effort in 2014 led WHO to declare the spread of wild poliovirus a public health emergency; that PHEIC remains in place today.
• The latest reports from Congo show patients not usually known to contract Ebola are infected: newborn babies
• An Ebola case has been discovered in a city of 1.2 million people — a 'game changer' that makes fighting the outbreak much more difficult
• 9 dangerous diseases that could be prevented by vaccines within the next decade, from HIV to cancer </s> The second-worst Ebola outbreak in history has killed more than 1,500 people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) since it began last August. And on Wednesday, nearly a year after the outbreak began, and in the midst of renewed concerns over its spread, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak a public-health emergency of international concern.

The decision is meant to spur a stronger response from the international community in hopes of ending the outbreak, which has proved difficult to contain due to a humanitarian crisis DRC, attacks on health care workers and rampant misinformation within the country. Concerns of further spread were reignited last month when infected individuals died in neighboring Uganda after traveling from the DRC. The disease’s presence was also recently confirmed in the DRC city of Goma, which is considered a transport hub and is near the Rwandan border.

“Now is the time for the international community to stand in solidarity with the people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference Wednesday. “I stress this: The government of DRC is doing everything it can. They need the support of the international community.”

The declaration came at the recommendation of the International Health Regulations (IHR) Emergency Committee, which cited possible increased national and regional risks associated with the outbreak. At three prior meetings on the topic, the WHO declined to declare the outbreak an international public-health emergency.

While Ghebreyesus said Wednesday that he hopes countries continue to contribute funding to the response, the emergency declaration is meant as a call for strengthened and streamlined international effort to slow the outbreak, which has thus far infected more than 2,400 people. The IHR recommends that affected countries improve their preparedness for detecting and treating cases of Ebola, enhance screening and public education in key areas, minimize security threats and embrace the use of preventive tools such as vaccines.

The IHR does not, however, recommend that countries restrict travel or trade to the DRC, as “such measures are usually implemented out of fear and have no basis in science.” It also said screening at airports and other ports of entry outside the region is unnecessary.

Thus far, U.S. involvement in the Ebola outbreak has been fairly minimal, though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced in June that it would activate an Emergency Operations Center in the DRC to help support outbreak response. The World Bank in May also pledged to release an additional $10 million from its Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility to help with response; the WHO has to-date received $6.5 million, officials said at the press conference Wednesday. (UNICEF has also received $13.5 million, they said.) Countries, including the U.K., have also recently promised financial contributions.

Ghebreyesus stressed that public-health funding must address not only existing outbreaks, but also the prevention of future ones.

“Financing should be for preparedness,” he said. “Financing should be to fix the roof before the rain comes.” </s> The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo made the long-feared jump across borders with three cases confirmed Wednesday in Uganda, including the death of a 5-year-old boy who had the virus.

The World Health Organization and Ugandan health authorities said Tuesday the Congolese boy had traveled from Congo on Sunday, entered Uganda with his family and sought medical care.

The other two confirmed cases are the boy’s 3-year-old brother and his grandmother, 50. They are being treated under isolation at the Bwera Hospital Ebola Treatment Unit, in the west of Uganda, the country’s Ministry of Health said.

In a tweet Wednesday, WHO said the boy died Tuesday night.

“The young patient – 5- year-old index case of #Ebola died last night. Two more samples were sent to UVRI and have tested positive. We, therefore, have three confirmed cases of #Ebola in #Uganda,” the tweet said, referring to the Uganda Virus Research Institute.

The ministry added that eight people who had been in contact with the family were being traced.

The Congo outbreak is both the second largest and second deadliest Ebola outbreak in history.

More than 1,300 people have died since it began in August. The epicenter is in North Kivu and Ituri provinces, among the most populous in the Congo and bordering Uganda, Rwanda and South Sudan.

Concern had been mounting that the infectious disease would cross the border, underscored by an increase in the number of cases in recent weeks.

Pressure on WHO to declare international emergency

Dr. Jeremy Farrar, director of Wellcome Trust, a UK medical research charity, said that while Uganda was well-prepared to cope with the disease, global health authorities should be ready for more cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo and other neighboring countries.

“This epidemic is in a truly frightening phase and shows no sign of stopping anytime soon,” he said in a statement.

“There are now more deaths than any other Ebola outbreak in history, bar the West Africa Epidemic of 2013-16, and there can be no doubt that the situation could escalate towards those terrible levels.”

Uganda’s Health Ministry said the boy and his grandmother had been vomiting blood, a severe symptom of Ebola, when they had presented themselves to doctors.

“Ebola is a horrific illness that ravages the human body,” said Brechtje van Lith, Save the Children’s country director in Uganda. “This first death, of a child, is a sickening reminder of the dangers of this disease.”

WHO is likely to come under pressure to declare the outbreak an international health emergency. In April, the health body said it did not constitute a “public health emergency of international concern.”

WHO defines a public health emergency of international concern as “an extraordinary event” that constitutes a “public health risk to other States through the international spread of disease” and “to potentially require a coordinated international response.”

Unlike the outbreak in West Africa that killed more than 11,000 people, there are now vaccines and experimental treatments to help stop the spread of the disease.

However, the Congo outbreak has proven difficult to bring under control because of community mistrust and violent attacks on health care workers.

“A step up in the national response with full international support is critical if we’re to contain the epidemic and ensure the very best protection for the communities at risk and for the health workers working to protect lives,” Farrar said. “This needs to be championed at the highest political levels, including at the UN and the upcoming G20.”

Uganda’s health ministry said it was vaccinating front-line health workers and people who had been in contact with the family. It said people should report any symptoms including unexplained bleeding from any body opening, vomiting of blood, bloody diarrhea and muscle pain.

It appealed to the public to “suspend social norms like shaking hands and hugging” and called on border districts to suspend mass gatherings such as weddings and markets and in places of worship. </s> The World Health Organization said Wednesday the deadly Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo is now an international health emergency after the virus spread this week to a city of 2 million people.

The WHO declared the outbreak a "public health emergency of international concern," a rare designation only used for the gravest epidemics.

"It is time for the world to take notice," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement, as he accepted the advice of his advisory board to invoke emergency provisions only used by the U.N. health agency four times previously.

A WHO expert committee declined on three previous occasions to advise the United Nations health agency to make the declaration, but other experts say the outbreak has long met the conditions.

More than 1,600 people have died since August in the second deadliest Ebola outbreak in history, which is unfolding in a region described as a war zone.

This week the first Ebola case was confirmed in Goma, a major regional crossroads on the Rwandan border with an international airport. Experts have feared this for months.

A declaration of a global health emergency often brings greater international attention and aid. </s> The World Health Organization announced an emergency committee would meet Friday to determine whether to upgrade its assessment of the situation to “a public health emergency of international concern”.

WHO, in October and again in April, held off declaring the DRC epidemic an emergency of international concern, because the outbreak was contained to one part of DRC.

For the committee to make the emergency call, it must determine that the epidemic “carries implications for public health beyond the affected State’s national border and may require immediate international action”.

If such a declaration is made Friday it will represent a major shift in mobilisation against the disease.

The current Ebola epidemic began in August last year in eastern Congo and has already infected at least 2,062 people, killing 1,390 of them.

“This epidemic is in a truly frightening phase and shows no sign of stopping anytime soon,” said Jeremy Farrar, an infectious disease specialist and director of the Wellcome Trust global health charity which is involved in fighting Ebola.

“We can expect and should plan for more cases in DRC and neighbouring countries,” he said, adding: “There are now more deaths than any other Ebola outbreak in history, bar the West Africa Epidemic of 2013-16, and there can be no doubt that the situation could escalate towards those terrible levels.”

The Red Cross said it was scaling up efforts to contain the spread of the virus since it was detected in Uganda.

“This is a worrying development, but we have been preparing for this day for months now,” Robert Kwesiga, Uganda Red Cross Secretary General, said in a statement Wednesday.

Experts noted that Uganda, which has been on high alert for possible spread of Ebola and has already vaccinated many frontline healthworkers, is relatively well prepared and should be able to limit the virus’ spread.

“The current cases in Uganda will be quickly contained but the failure to stop the current Ebola epidemic in DRC is simply tragic,” said Ian Jones, a professor virology at Britain’s Reading University.

At least two people have so far died of Ebola in Uganda, following Tuesday’s confirmation that the deadly virus had crossed into the country.

The five-year-old Congolese child who was the first recorded case in Uganda and its grandmother have both succumbed to the virus, at Bwere General Hospital, where an isolation facility has been established.

Authorities are now worried about the spread of the epidemic, after mire cases were confirmed on Wednesday.

“Two more samples … have tested positive,” the World Health Organization agency said on Twitter, citing the health minister and bringing the total tally of confirmed cases to three.

Local news channel, Daily Monitor, said Ebola cases in the country have risen to 10, citing the country’s health minister Dr. Ruth Aceng who said there are seven more suspects, including two men, two women and a six-months-old baby, who came from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

A case of Ebola has been confirmed in Uganda, ten months after the deadly virus was confirmed in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The 5-year-old Congolese child, who entered Uganda on June 9 through Bwera Border post, is receiving care, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday.

“This is the first confirmed case in Uganda during the Ebola outbreak on-going in neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo,” the WHO said in a statement.

The child’s family sought medical care at Kagando hospital and the child was transferred to Bwera Ebola Treatment Unit for management, the WHO said.

“The confirmation was made today by the Uganda Virus Institute (UVRI) …contacts are being monitored,” WHO said.

How the Ebola victim came to Uganda

The boy was accompanied by his Ugandan father and Congolese mother, who had returned to Congo to nurse her father before he died of Ebola, Uganda’s Health Minister Jane Ruth Aceng told a news conference.

The family returned to Uganda with four other family members of Congolese origin, Aceng said. All the other Congolese family members are in isolation at Bwera Hospital. Two of them have already developed symptoms similar to those of Ebola and samples have been removed from them, Aceng said.

Results of tests are expected Wednesday. Eight more contacts are being followed up, Aceng said.

Aceng said the family entered Uganda on June 10, not 9. The reason for the discrepancy was not immediately clear and neither the WHO nor the government was reachable for clarification.

Since the epidemic began in August in eastern Congo, the Congo health ministry said on Monday that it had recorded 2,062 cases, including 1,390 deaths.

Neighbouring Uganda has suffered regular outbreaks of Ebola and Marburg over the years, both high-fatality viral haemorrhagic fevers. Health facilities to treat the diseases are relatively robust.

A donor-supported laboratory in Entebbe, a lakeside town south of the capital Kampala, means Uganda typically confirms outbreaks much faster than many of its neighbours.

Preparing for possible cases of Ebola, Uganda has vaccinated nearly 4,700 health workers, disease monitoring has been intensified, special treatment units set up and health workers have been trained to recognize symptoms of the disease, WHO said.

Uganda’s worst Ebola outbreak was in 2000 when 425 people were infected. More than half of them died. </s> There is no specific treatment for the Ebola virus.

There is no specific treatment for the Ebola virus. News Corp Australia

At least 17 people have died in an area of the Democratic Republic of Congo where health officials have declared an Ebola outbreak.

A health ministry statement said the central African country was "facing another epidemic" less than a year after its last Ebola outbreak killed eight people.

Medical teams dispatched to the zone took five samples from suspected active cases and two tested positive for the Zaire strain of the Ebola virus, the ministry said in a statement.

In the past five weeks, there have been 21 suspected cases of viral haemorrhagic fever, including 17 deaths.

​DRC was not affected by the major 2014 outbreak of the virus, which killed thousands of people across west Africa.

But in recent decades there have been a number of outbreaks there caused by the Zaire Ebola species.

Ebola first emerged in 1976 in what is now the DRC, and is named after a river in the country.

Health minister Oly Ilunga said [in French] a rapid response team would be deployed to the Équateur Province in the northwest of the country on Wednesday morning.

"Our country is facing another epidemic of the Ebola virus, which constitutes an international public health emergency," the ministry added in a statement.

"We still dispose of the well trained human resources that were able to rapidly control previous epidemics."

Ebola is believed to be spread over long distances by bats, which can host the virus without dying, as it infects other animals it shares trees with such as monkeys. It often spreads to humans via infected bushmeat.

The virus is also spread person-to-person in the blood, body fluids or organs of someone with the infection.

There are currently no licensed treatments or vaccines for Ebola, although potential new therapies are currently under development.

After Congo's last Ebola flare-up, authorities there approved the use of a new experimental vaccine but in the end did not deploy it owing to logistical challenges and the relatively minor nature of the outbreak.

The World Health Organisation said it was working to "rapidly scale up its operations" in DRC following the outbreak.

"Our top priority is to get to Bikoro to work alongside the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and partners to reduce the loss of life and suffering related to this new Ebola virus disease outbreak," said Dr Peter Salama, WHO Deputy Director-General for emergency preparedness and response.

WHO said it had released $1m (£740,000) from its Contingency Fund for Emergencies to support response activities for the next three months with the goal of stopping the spread of Ebola to surrounding provinces and countries.
The World Health Organisation declares the most recent Ebola outbreak in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.