[MUST READ & SHARE] WHO holds emergency Ebola meeting via @iKanzee_RR

GENEVA (AFP) – The World Health
Organization on Wednesday began a two-day
emergency meeting on west Africa’s Ebola
epidemic, with the UN agency deciding
whether to declare it an international crisis.
The closed-door session is tasked with ruling
whether the outbreak constitutes what is
known in WHO-speak as a “public health
emergency of international concern”.
Taking the form of a telephone conference
between senior WHO officials, representatives
of affected countries, and experts from around
the globe, the meeting is not expected to
made its decision public until Friday.
To date, the WHO has not issued global-level
recommendations — such as travel and trade
restrictions — related to the outbreak which
began in Guinea and has spread to Liberia,
Sierra Leone and Nigeria.
But the scale of concern is underlined by the
WHO emergency session itself — such
consultations are relatively rare.
The UN agency this year held such meetings
on polio and last year on the mysterious
Middle East Respiratory Syndrome.
But before that, the last emergency meeting
had been during the 2009 H1N1 influenza
outbreak.
Since breaking out earlier this year, the Ebola
epidemic in west Africa has claimed 887 lives
and infected more than 1,603 people.
Most of the deaths have been in Guinea, but
the scale of the epidemic has slowed there,
while intensifying in neighbouring Liberia and
Sierra Leone.
Nigeria on Wednesday confirmed five new
cases of Ebola in Lagos and a second death
from the virus, bringing the total number of
infections in sub-Saharan Africa’s largest city
to seven.
Ebola, a form of haemorrhagic fever for which
there is no vaccine, causes severe muscular
pain, fever, headaches and, in the worst cases,
unstoppable bleeding.
It is believed to be carried by animals hunted
for meat, and spreads among humans via
bodily fluids.
It has killed around two-thirds of those it has
infected since its emergence in 1976, with two
outbreaks registering fatality rates
approaching 90 percent.
The death rate in the current outbreak is
around 55 percent.
Ebola was first discovered in 1976 in what is
now the Democratic Republic of Congo, and is
named after a river there.