Geneva — World Health Organization (WHO) head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Monday that the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo is spreading rapidly.
He was speaking at the WHO executive board meeting in Geneva following the World Health Assembly, which ended on May 23, without the United States, which withdrew from the WHO at the beginning of 2026 after criticising its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tedros said, “The (WHO) restructuring has now been completed, the Organization is more stable, and we are moving forward.”
During the assembly, Tom Fletcher, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, had said that the “epidemiological context is challenging: there are not yet licensed vaccines or treatments for the Bundibugyo (current) strain.”
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He said that the region faces some of the most difficult operating environments in the world for the UN’s life-saving work.
“We face conflict and high population movement. We are working to secure safe and sustained access for frontline responders, including to areas controlled by armed groups.”
Fletcher said it is essential that there be no obstruction to responses and that there be access to all routes – air, land and water – across the affected areas.
He also said he was “grateful to the United States for its swift financial contribution to support the response.”
– More UN staff deployed
“I am in close contact with our Humanitarian Coordinators and the teams in DRC, Uganda and South Sudan. More staff from key UN agencies and partners are deploying this weekend to reinforce the effort. I pay tribute to the communities and humanitarians working to contain this outbreak.”
At Monday’s meeting, Tedros welcomed new members of the WHO executive committee: Bhutan, China, Côte d’Ivoire, Georgia, Guinea, Kuwait, Mozambique, South Sudan, Suriname and the United Kingdom, four from African countries.
Before the meeting, Alex Beauvais, director of Impact and Insights at the McKinsey Health Institute from London, told All Africa Global News about studies his group had conducted, including in three African countries and that although people live longer, they do not always live in better health.
The institute had issued a report on May 13, finding that women spend more than 25 per cent of their lives in poor health compared with men, on average.
“The failure to deliver consistent, high-quality healthcare for women contributes to one-third of the women’s health gap,” said McKinsey.
“Life expectancy in South Africa, Egypt, and Nigeria has increased markedly over the past century, reflecting one of the major public-health achievements of the period,” Beauvais told All Africa.
“These gains were supported by improvements in communicable disease control, maternal and child health, vaccination, antibiotics, sanitation, nutrition, and broader health-system capacity.”
– Longer but not healthier lives
However, he said longer lives do not always mean healthier lives, and that in the countries mentioned, a material gap remains between life expectancy and healthy life expectancy, with many years still lived with disease or disability.
He said that continued health investment, therefore, matters not only for well-being, but also for human capital, productivity, and economic resilience.
“Globally, data shows us that investing in health interventions we know about today could add nine years of healthy life by 2050, representing a $12.5 trillion opportunity.”
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Valentina Sartori, also of the McKinsey Health Institute from Zurich, spoke about the gap in health between men and women and said, “Globally, closing the women’s health gap could add around $1 trillion to the global economy annually by 2040.
She said that in Africa, “Across all countries, cardiovascular diseases contribute most to the burden gap, followed by cancer, gynaecological disease, and maternal and newborn disorders.
“In both Egypt and South Africa, cardiovascular disease also remains the top therapeutic area contributing to the burden gap,” said Sartori.
She said that in Nigeria, intestinal infections, followed by neglected tropical diseases, and then maternal and newborn disorders, contribute as the top three to the gap.
