Thank you, Professor Steffen,
Good evening everyone in the room, and to everyone online.
Thank you, Professor Steffen once again for your leadership of the Emergency Committee, as well as all the members of the committee, and the advisors and those who made presentations during today’s deliberations.
As you know, over the weekend a man from Butembo took a bus to Goma, a city of two million people on the border with Rwanda, and the gateway to the rest of DRC and the world.
On his arrival in Goma, the man, a pastor, visited a health center where he was diagnosed with Ebola. He has since died.
Separately, last Thursday a woman with Ebola symptoms from DRC crossed the border to buy fish at a market in Uganda. On Friday she was diagnosed with Ebola and treated in DRC. She too has died.
Although there is no evidence yet of local transmission in either Goma or Uganda, these two events represent a concerning geographical expansion of the virus.
As a result of this concern for potential further spread, the committee recommended that I declare the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern, and I have accepted that advice.
Our risk assessment remains that the risk of spread in DRC and the region is very high, and the risk of spread outside the region is low.
I have also accepted the committee’s recommendations for DRC, its neighbours and all countries, which you can read in the statement.
In particular, I emphasize that WHO does not recommend any restrictions on travel or trade, which rather than stopping Ebola, can actually hamper the fight.
Closing borders could have disastrous consequences for the lives and livelihoods of the people who cross the border every day for trade, education or to visit relatives.
Such restrictions force people to use informal and unmonitored border crossings, increasing the potential for the spread of disease. They will also serve no useful purpose – already there have been more than 75 million screenings for Ebola at border crossings and other checkpoints.
We call on all countries, companies and individuals to support DRC by respecting those recommendations.
Now is the time for the international community to stand in solidarity with the people of DRC, not to impose punitive and counter-productive restrictions that will only serve to isolate them.
The government of DRC is showing exceptional transparency in sharing information every single day. It was the DRC government which informed Uganda about the family with Ebola that crossed the border last month. It was the government of DRC that informed the international community immediately last week that there was a case in Goma.
The government of DRC is doing everything it can. They need the support of the international community.
That includes its financial support.
As we said very clearly after the last Emergency Committee meeting, a PHEIC is not for fundraising, it’s for preventing the international spread of disease.
WHO is not aware of any donor that has withheld funding because a PHEIC had not been declared.
But if that was the excuse, it can no longer be used.
We are now finalizing the fourth Strategic Response Plan for this outbreak, which will outline the resources needed for the next phase of the response. We don’t have an exact sum yet, but it will run to the hundreds of millions.
Unless the international community steps up and funds the response now, we will be paying for this outbreak for a long time to come.
Finally, I want to commend the Government of the DRC for its commitment and cooperation, and to His Excellency the President who has visited the affected area, and has formed an inter-ministerial committee to ensure the whole government is focused on the response.
I also want to honour the hundreds of responders from the government, partners and our own staff, who as we speak are putting themselves in harm’s way to serve others.
More than ever, they need our support.
Thank you.