More than half the global population lacked access to essential healthcare services, the latest annual report released by the World Health Organisation (WHO) revealed on Thursday, May 17, 2018.

The report, titled “World Health Statistics: Monitoring Health for the Sustainable Development Goals”, is WHO’s annual snapshot of the state of the world’s health.

The 2018 edition contains the latest available data for 36 health-related Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicators.

In total, more than 50 SDG indicators measure health outcomes or health service provision.

“Less than half the people in the world today get all of the essential health services they need,” the report stated.

According to the report, weak health systems in a large number of countries are at fault for the lack of access to basic health services.

“In many countries, weak health systems remain an obstacle to progress and lead to shortages in coverage of even the most basic health services, as well as poor preparedness for health emergencies,” the report stated.

The WHO report disclosed that for the period of 2007-2016, 76 countries reported having less than one physician per 1,000 of the population.

Also 87 countries reported having fewer than three nursing and midwifery personnel per 1,000 of the population.

According to WHO, medicines for palliative care and pain management are considered essential.

However, data from health facility surveys conducted nationally in 29 countries during the period 2007-2017 showed that only 64 per cent of public sector facilities surveyed in low income countries.

Also, only 58 per cent of public sector facilities surveyed in lower middle income countries stocked medicines for pain management and palliative care.

The report identified that apart from access to basic and necessary healthcare, challenges also persist in attaining the eight Millennium Development Goals [MDG], which range from combating AIDS, malaria, and other diseases to reducing child mortality.

“In spite all the progress made during the [MDG] era, major challenges persist in the MDG priority areas.

“These challenges will need to be addressed if further progress is to be made in reducing maternal and child mortality, improving nutrition, and combating communicable diseases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis (TB), and malaria,” the report stated.

The SDGs were adopted by UN member states in 2015 as the world’s objectives for the next 15 years.

They comprise 17 interlinked goals and 169 targets to be achieved globally by 2030.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Gabonese ministry of health are to set up a safety plan to prevent the spread of Ebola in the country after the outbreak of the disease in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Gabonese authorities, in a statement on Thursday, May 17, 2018, said it had become necessary to strengthen the capacities of health workers and epidemiological surveillance along the borders and at airports.

According to WHO, the Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and Gabon are on the list of high risk countries.

No cases of Ebola fever have been reported yet in Gabon.

The Gabonese authorities had suspended flights and maritime connections from affected countries and restriction of the issuance of entry visas to Gabon to passengers coming from area affected by the epidemic as measure to prevent the spread.

Congolese and United Nations officials were racing on Thursday, May 17, 2018 to prevent a runaway Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

They are working out the logistics of keeping newly acquired vaccines well below freezing in a steamy region on the equator with unreliable power.

World Health Organisation (WHO) spokesman, Christian Lindmeier, said the U.N. body would convene an Emergency Committee meeting on Friday to consider the international risks.

This is DRC’s ninth epidemic since the disease was identified in the 1970s.

However, this outbreak is its most alarming because of the risk of transmission via regular river transport to the capital Kinshasa, a city of 10 million.

There have already been 44 suspected, probable or confirmed cases of Ebola, and 23 people have died.

Potentially, most worrying is a confirmed case in Mbandaka, a city of about 1 million connected to Kinshasa by the Congo River.

“This does change the way we need to respond,” Peter Salama, WHO’s medical emergency programme head, told the media in Geneva.

“Overnight, Mbandaka has become the number one priority for preventing this outbreak from getting out of control.”

The other Ebola cases were spread across sites in remote areas where the disease might not travel quickly.

An experimental but highly effective vaccine is being deployed, with health workers being vaccinated first.

But it normally needs to be kept 80 degrees Celsius below freezing in a humid region where daytime temperatures hover around 30.

“For now, the cold chain is guaranteed at – 80 degrees until Kinshasa,” Health Minister Oly Ilunga told Reuters.

“There is a fridge that will be prepared (on Thursday) … in Mbandaka and that will be at -80.”

“This vaccine is no longer experimental. The effectiveness has been proven and validated,” he added.

“Now that we are facing the Ebola virus we must use all the resources we have.”

WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic told the media that the vaccine can still be effective for up to two weeks if stored in a fridge at between 8 and 2 degrees above freezing.

To avoid criticism received during the huge former Ebola outbreak, which killed 11,300 people in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia from 2014 to 2016, WHO is moving fast on Congo’s latest outbreak.

The emergency committee will decide whether to declare a “public health emergency of international concern”, which would mean getting access to more resources, Lindmeier said.

The Kinshasa government reported the outbreak on May 8, one day after two samples tested positive.

Within days the WHO was sending experts, preparing a helicopter “air bridge” to the site, and planning a vaccination campaign.

The nightmare scenario is an outbreak in Kinshasa, a crowded city where millions live in unsanitary slums not connected to a sewer system.

Several public transport boats a day head from Mbandaka downstream over the river to the capital.

They are so overloaded with people that they sometimes topple over, their toilets are usually filthy and water for washing absent.

“If this Ebola outbreak ever reaches Kinshasa, what we are going to see is death here,” Jean Marie Mukaya, a resident of the city, told media.

“Because it is very dirty here, the government and the population must … get rid of all the dirt.”

Already the WHO has warned that there is a “moderate” regional risk because the disease could travel along the river to Central African Republic and Congo Republic.

But it has said the global risk is low because of the remoteness of the area and the rapid response launched so far.

Even if the logistics of the ‘fridge bridge’ prove easy enough to overcome, “the vaccine is not a magic bullet,” Salama told Reuters this week, especially since health workers have been infected.

“Having healthcare workers infected is usually a ‘canary in the mine’ for potential amplification,” he said.

The first 4,000 doses of experimental vaccine provided by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to combat against the Ebola outbreak arrived on Wednesday, May 16, 2018 in Kinshasa, the capital city of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Orly Ilunga, the Congolese Minister of Health, who received the vaccine in Kinshasa, indicated that the batch received from WHO would be stored first in the laboratory of the National Institute of Biomedical Research in Kinshasa, before being transported to the health zone of Bikoro, in the province of Equateur in the north-west of the country.

According to the Ministry of Health, a vaccination campaign is planned for this week to raise awareness about this vaccination, which will be tested for the first time in the DRC.

During his visit to Kinshasa last Saturday, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the WHO, met with the President of the DRC, Jospeh Kabila, who officially authorised the use of this vaccine against the Ebola virus in his country.

According to the latest WHO statistic, 32 cases (two confirmed cases, 18 probable and 12 suspects), including 18 deaths, confirmed Ebola death, were recorded between April 4 and May 9 in Bikoro.

NAN reports that the WHO on Monday gave the go-ahead to officials in the DRC to import and use an experimental Ebola vaccine in the country.

WHO Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said: “We have agreement, registration, plus import permit, everything formally agreed already.

“All is ready now to really use it.”

The vaccine, developed by Merck in 2016, has proven safe and effective in human trials, but it is still experimental as it does not yet have a licence.

It must be kept at -60 to -80 degrees Celsius (-76°F to -112°F), creating huge logistical challenges.

The shot, which was tested in Guinea in 2015 at the end of a vast Ebola outbreak in West Africa, is designed for use in a so-called “ring vaccination” approach.

This would mean that when a new Ebola case is diagnosed, all people who might have been in recent contact with them are traced and vaccinated to try and prevent the disease’s spread.

The WHO said 393 people who identified as contacts of Ebola patients were being followed up.

Tedros travelled to Congo over the weekend and flew to the remote area, still only accessible by motorbike or helicopter, where the deadly haemorrhagic disease has broken out.

“Being there is very, very important. If a general cannot be with its troops in the front line it’s not a general,” he said.

“And the second thing is, associated with Ebola there is stigma. We have to go and show that that should really stop. And if there is risk, my life is not better than anyone.”

He praised the Congolese government, including President Joseph Kabila whom he met during his trip.

Information about the outbreak in Bikoro, Iboko and Wangata in Equateur province was still limited, the WHO said, but at present the outbreak does not meet the criteria for declaring a “public health event of international concern”, which would trigger the formation of an emergency WHO committee.