The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the deadly Ebola crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo an international public health emergency.

The announcement was made on Wednesday following a meeting of its emergency committee in Geneva. The move came days after the virus was confirmed in Goma in eastern Congo on the Rwandan border.

According to reports, earlier on three previous occasions, a WHO expert committee declined to advise the United Nations health agency to make the declaration for this outbreak, although other experts confirmed it met the conditions.

It is the fifth declaration of such emergency in all history. Previous emergencies had been declared for the devastating 2014-16 Ebola outbreak in West Africa that killed more than 11,000 people, the emergence of Zika in the Americas, the swine flu pandemic and polio.