The World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared the Ebola outbreak in West Africa to be an international public health emergency that requires an extraordinary response to stop its spread.
The WHO announced the Ebola outbreak - the largest and longest in history - is worrying enough to merit being declared an international health emergency.
WHO declared similar emergencies for the swine flu pandemic in 2009 and for polio in May.
WHO chief Dr Margaret Chan said the announcement is "a clear call for international solidarity" but acknowledged that many countries would probably not have any Ebola cases.
She said: "Countries affected to date simply do not have the capacity to manage an outbreak of this size and complexity on their own. I urge the international community to provide this support on the most urgent basis possible."
The agency convened an expert committee this week to assess the severity of the epidemic.
The current outbreak of Ebola began in Guinea in March and has since spread to Sierra Leone and Liberia. There is no licensed treatment or vaccine for Ebola and the death rate has been about 50%.
The impact of the WHO declaration is unclear as a similar announcement made about polio does not yet seem to have slowed the spread of virus.
During a WHO meeting last week to reconsider the status of polio, experts noted that countries had not yet fully applied the recommendations made in May, there have been more instances of international spread, and outbreaks have worsened in Pakistan and Cameroon.
In the United States, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC) have already elevated its Ebola response to the highest level and it has recommended against travelling to West Africa.
Yesterday, CDC director Dr Tom Frieden told a Congressional hearing that the current outbreak is set to sicken more people than all previous outbreaks of the disease combined.
Dr David Heymann, who directed WHO's response to the Sars outbreak and is now a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: "I don't know what the advantage is of declaring an international emergency.
"This could bring in more foreign aid but we don't know that yet."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article