The World Health Organization issued an alert on Thursday describing the Ebola situation as a regional public health concern spanning Central, Eastern, and Western Africa, and called on countries to act together to contain the spread of infections, noting in a statement that the disease moves without pause.

WHO Regional Director for Africa Mohamed Yakub Janabi told an online press briefing that the outbreak adapts to movement and exploits gaps in health infrastructure, adding that the spread is no longer contained within a single location and that an increasingly layered response — one drawing on coordinated action across the region — is now required.

According to Janabi, a Bundibugyo virus-linked Ebola case brought in from outside the country has been verified in Nigeria, while nine cases — among them one fatality — have been recorded in Kenya. At a briefing, Director-General for Health Patrick Amoth reported that the eight affected individuals were undergoing treatment, with upwards of 120 others held in quarantine.

A formal appeal for 10,000 vaccine doses — directed to both the WHO and the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention — was lodged by Kenyan authorities, with the aim of bolstering protection among frontline health workers.

Eight of the country's 26 provinces have recorded cases of the disease since the outbreak was formally declared in May, with the Democratic Republic of the Congo bearing the full geographic weight of its spread. Health authorities in the DRC published updated tallies late Wednesday showing that, through Oct. 20, the Ebola outbreak had produced 9,704 laboratory-confirmed infections, of which 4,687 patients did not survive — a fatality proportion of 48.3 percent.

Around six in ten deaths from Ebola logged in the DRC over that span occurred outside any treatment centre — a distribution that Janabi put forward as evidence the virus retained a foothold well beyond the patients health workers were directly monitoring.

On Oct. 28, Africa CDC plans to bring together health ministers from across the continent in a virtual session aimed at aligning their responses to the growing outbreak. Africa CDC Director-General Jean Kaseya noted that the arrival of a confirmed case in Nigeria had extended the outbreak into West Africa, bringing the total geographic footprint — now stretching across Central, Eastern, and Western regions of the continent — to a scale not previously recorded for an Ebola event.

On 15 May, health authorities in the DRC formally announced the outbreak, and within two days the WHO had elevated it to a public health emergency of international concern. Following that development, the Africa CDC formally elevated the situation to a public health emergency under its continental security framework.

Documentation of the outbreak now active in the DRC places it as the largest on record for that nation, ranking it second globally — a position it holds behind the West African epidemic that ran from 2014 through 2016.