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Shift Media News 
By OKELLO ALLAN
GUINEA|SHIFTMEDIA| The World Health Organization (WHO) has alerted six African countries to watch out for potential cases of Ebola after it emerged in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Guinea.
The DRC declared the emergence of Ebola on February 7 while Guinea declared the outbreak on Sunday.
The White House on Tuesday issued its first official statement on the Ebola outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the West African country Guinea calling for swift action to avoid further catastrophes..
The two burgeoning Ebola outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Guinea require swift action “to avoid catastrophic consequences,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday.
It’s the first official statement from the White House on the reemergence of Ebola in the two African countries. Psaki said President Joe Biden has been briefed on the situations in Central and West Africa.
“While the world is reeling from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Ebola has again emerged, simultaneously, in both Central and West Africa. The world cannot afford to turn the other way,” Psaki wrote in the statement. “We must do everything in our power to respond quickly, effectively, and with commensurate resources to stop these outbreaks before they become largescale epidemics.”
Similarly, the World Health Organization announced last week that it had confirmed new cases of Ebola in Butembo, a city in North Kivu Province in the DRC.
The new strain of Ebola was confirmed by officials in Guinea over the weekend in N’Zerekore, in southern Guinea.
“We have already alerted the six countries around, including of course Sierra Leone and Liberia, and they are moving very fast to prepare and be ready and to look for any potential infection,” the WHO’s Margaret Harris told a Geneva briefing.
Between 2013 and 2016 more than 11,000 people died in the West Africa Ebola epidemic, which began in Guinea. Ebola infects humans through close contact with infected animals, such as chimpanzees and fruit bats. It then spreads between humans by direct contact with infected blood, fluids, and organs.
It can also be spread indirectly through contact with contaminated environments.
