The Ebola outbreak in West Africa constitutes an international health emergency, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Friday in Geneva and called for global action to stop the virus from spreading further. "This is the largest, most severe and the most complex outbreak in the nearly four decades history of this disease," dpa quoted WHO Director General Margaret Chan as saying. She added that declaring the Ebola epidemic a "Public Health Emergency of International Concern" does not mean that the WHO expects the virus to spread beyond West Africa, but that it wants countries around the world to raise their vigilance. Another reason for declaring an emergency was that the affected countries all have weak health systems, which need international support. "I urge the international community to provide this support on the most urgent-need basis as soon as possible," she said.
