August 1, 2018

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MEDIA CONTACT: Karen Teber / km463@georgetown.edu

WASHINGTON (Aug 1, 2018) – Today, the World Health Organization announced that preliminary laboratory testing in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) indicates “a cluster of cases of Ebola virus in North Kivu province.”

The DRC announced last month that the Ebola outbreak that began earlier this year in Equateur Province had ended.

Public health and law expert Lawrence O. Gostin, JD, faculty director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown, says, the control of the outbreak in Equateur Province demonstrated the importance of preparedness and coordination.
“The cluster of Ebola virus cases in North Kivu province, DRC requires a well-funded, internationally coordinated strategy,” says Gostin. “I have high confidence in the World Health Organization to partner with the DRC to bring this outbreak under control.

“The highly effective international collaboration to stem the earlier urban outbreak was exemplary. If WHO and partners bring the same level of diligence, skill and funding to this current outbreak it will demonstrate what a new, reformed, and better-funding WHO can do for global health security,” he says.

Contact Gostin at gostin@law.georgetown.edu.

Click here for a list of Georgetown subject matter experts who can provide comment and context on Ebola the areas of infectious disease (clinical and molecular biology), global health security, vaccine development and international health regulations.

The O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University is the premier center for health law, scholarship, and policy. Its mission is to contribute to a more powerful and deeper understanding of the multiple ways in which law can be used to improve the public’s health, using objective evidence as a measure. The O’Neill Institute seeks to advance scholarship, science, research, and teaching that will encourage key decision-makers in the public, private, and civil society to employ the law as a positive tool for enabling more people in the United States and throughout the world to lead healthier lives.

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