The World Health Organization is sounding the alarm on a potentially unreported Ebola case in Tanzania, according to a Sept. 21 statement cited by STAT.
The WHO is urging Tanzanian officials to share testing samples for a female physician who died Sept. 8 after returning from Uganda with Ebola-like symptoms. Tanzanian leaders say the woman tested negative for Ebola but have yet to share her samples.
"The presumption is that if all the tests really have been negative, then there is no reason for Tanzania not to submit those samples for secondary testing and verification," Ashish Jha, MD, director of the Cambridge, Mass.-based Harvard Global Health Institute, told STAT. "And the fact that they're not doing that, I think both raises concern and … whatever they do next, people are going to have less confidence in it."
The public statement is a "highly unusual" move for the WHO, which usually uses more diplomatic means when communicating with countries, according to STAT. Both the CDC and WHO are calling on Tanzania to disclose all relevant information about the case amid fears that the Democratic Republic of Congo's 14-month-long Ebola outbreak could spread across East Africa if left unchecked.
As of Sept. 20, health officials have reported 3,160 confirmed and probable Ebola cases linked to the outbreak, along with 2,114 deaths.