empo has been reported in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for more than a decade and the number of cases reported each year has increased steadily over that period last year reported cases increased significantly and already the number of case reported so far this year has exceeded last year's total with more than 14,000 cases and 524 days last week I announced that I was convening an emergency committee under the international Health regulations to evaluate the up search of empo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and other countries in Africa today the emergency committee met
and advised me that in its view the situation constitutes a public health emergency of international concern I have accepted that advice the detection and Rapid spread of a new clade of empo in eastern DRC its detection in neighboring countries that had not previously reported empo and the potential for further spread within Africa and Beyond is very Waring in addition to other outbreaks of other clades of empo in other parts of Africa it's clear that a coordinated International response is essential to stop these outbreaks and save lives a publical emergency of international concern is the highest
level of alarm under International health law the emergency committee's advis to me and that of the African CDC centers for disase control and prevention which yesterday declared the public health emergency of regional security are aligned wh is on the ground working with the affected countries and others at r through our country and Regional Offices as well as with Partners including the Africa CDC NGS civil society and more we're on the ground supporting case investigation and contact tracing risk communication and Community engagement we're training health workers and supporting clinicians to provide appropriate care we're supporting countries
to access vaccines and develop the strategies to roll them out and much more to fund this work who has developed a regional response plan requiring an initial $15 million we have released about $1.5 million from The Who contingency fund for emergencies and we plan to release more in the coming days we're also appealing to donors to fund the rest of the response plan who is committed in the days and weeks ahead to coordinate the Global Response working closely with each of the affected countries and leveraging our on the ground presence to prevent transmission treat those
infected and save lives ultimately it's very important that you understand your outbreak uh for you to ultimately decide what group of persons to vaccinate and we have that Gap in parts of Africa where we don't fully understand the transmission Dynamics and the risk factors for empo that is expected to guide who were expected to vaccinate and so all countries and state parties and I think all the countries that presented had a costed plan and some of those countries also had uh plans for to ensure that they make a procurement for of vacines um we have
so far in Africa two countries that we have reason to believe that there is community transmission which are DRC and Burundi for the other countries though talk about Kenya Uganda and um recently Cod divir um it is isolated case and so far we do believe that there is no Community transmission um it should be noted that in most African country over 40 of our 47 country has a very effective Rob surveillance system that may miss some cases but it would be very difficult that they miss a whole outbreak that is happening in the country so
when it comes to the mvn uh mvn vaccine currently uh about half a million doses are in stock at the moment that can be procured uh uh by countries or other entities uh another uh 2. 4 million could be produced uh by the end of this year if request if uh buyers are there to uh uh make a firm procurement request and for 202 5 there could be another 10 million doses uh produced but there needs to be a film request for those manufacturers to plan for the production when it comes to the lc16 vaccine
this is a very special vaccine in terms of that this vaccine is not commercialized but at the moment uh produce on behalf of the government of Japan in previous uh uh incidences the government of Japan was very generous when being asked to donate vaccine to countries and this is also one way for dou Joe to work with uh countries and with the government of Japan to facilitate donation of the lc16 vaccine emergency committee is working on uh drafting some temporary recommendations for the consideration of the director General to issue so that is something we expect
to be able to release in in the next day or two the teams are working on it very hard even as we speak as we are sitting here and so with those targeted um temporary recommendations there would be some advice for member states affected member states at risk member states with regards to transmission there's multiple modes of transmission that we really need to better understand primarily what we are seeing is the contact type uh transmission um we have seen sexual transmission which is really what is concerning us um and now we have seen this virus
the different clades and in particular CA 1B in sexual networks and this is where we need to have targeted interventions stronger surveillance stronger contact tracing stronger risk communication Community engagement with affected communities with csos with people on the ground so that we could limit that onward spread [Applause] [Music]
