Ebola outbreak hits major Congo city

[harrybarracuda]

You're all going to die of Ebola. Or something.

Beni, Congo -- The Congolese health ministry confirmed an Ebola case in Goma late Sunday, marking the first time the virus has reached the city of more than 2 million people along the border with Rwanda since the epidemic began nearly a year ago. The health ministry said the man who arrived earlier Sunday in the regional capital was quickly transported to an Ebola treatment center.

Authorities said they had tracked down all the passengers on the bus the man took to Goma from Butembo, one of the towns hardest hit by the disease.

"Because of the speed with which the patient was identified and isolated, and the identification of all the other bus passengers coming from Butembo, the risk of it spreading in the rest of the city of Goma is small," the health ministry said in a statement.

Nonetheless, the head of the World Health Organization said the confirmed case in crowded Goma could be a game-changer in how the central African outbreak is tackled. One month ago, when the disease spread into Uganda, the WHO convened and decided it still did not rise to the level of a global health emergency. For such a declaration, an outbreak must constitute a risk to other countries and require a coordinated response. The declaration typically triggers more funding and political attention.

On Monday, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he hoped the virus would not spread in Goma, but he convened a meeting of the organization's emergency committee to discuss a possible global emergency declaration.

The virus has killed more than 1,600 people in Congo and two others who returned home across the border to neighboring Uganda. Health experts have long feared that it could make its way to Goma, which is located on the Rwandan border.

The health ministries in Congo's neighbors have been preparing for months for the possibility of cases, and frontline health workers already have been vaccinated.

The confirmed case announced late Sunday in eastern Congo involves a pastor who became ill last Tuesday. He then left Butembo on a bus, and arrived at a health center Sunday showing symptoms of Ebola, the health ministry said.

Violent attacks against health workers and treatment facilities have greatly compromised efforts to combat the epidemic in Butembo. Officials with Congo's Health Ministry said Monday that unidentified attackers had killed two Ebola community health workers over the weekend in North Kivu province. The workers had been receiving threats for months, the ministry said.

This outbreak, occurring close to Congo's borders of Uganda, Rwanda and South Sudan, has been like no other. Mistrust has been high in a region that had never faced Ebola before and the attacks by rebel groups have undermined aid efforts.

CBS News correspondent Debora Patta visited the epicenter of the outbreak in Congo in late May, and said the country's quarter-century-old civil war, and the violence and mistrust it has unleashed, were clearly disrupting efforts to contain the disease. Treatment centers have often been attacked by the myriad militia groups that operate in the region, and many locals were either too scared or too suspicious to seek medical assistance there.

Eastern Congo is home to a myriad of armed groups, and Mai Mai militia fighters are active near the hardest hit towns. Health teams have been unable to access violent areas to vaccinate people at risk of infection and to bring infected patients into isolation.

Other times the violence against health teams has come from residents who do not want their loved ones taken to treatment centers or buried in accordance with guidelines aimed at reducing Ebola transmission.

While the experimental vaccine is believed to have saved countless lives, not all Congolese people have accepted it. Some falsely believe that the vaccine is what is making people sick, in part because people can still develop the disease after getting the shot if they already had been infected.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ebola-virus-outbreak-goma-congo-pastor-first-confirmed-case-in-city-today-2019-07/

[harrybarracuda]

Don't say I didn't warn you.

WHO declares Congo Ebola outbreak as international health emergency

The outbreak has proved tenacious in an unstable region beset by violence, becoming Congo's worst ever, with almost 1,700 dead

The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared Congo's Ebola outbreak an international health emergency.


The organisation sounded a rarely used global alarm after the virus threatened to spread to a major city and into neighbouring countries.

Despite a highly effective vaccine and a swift international response after it was declared 11 months ago, the outbreak has proved tenacious in an unstable region beset by violence, becoming Congo's worst ever, with almost 1,700 dead.

A vast campaign of vigilance and vaccination, with almost 75 million screenings, has kept the highly infectious virus almost entirely confined to two provinces in north-eastern Congo. The emergency committee of international health experts that advises WHO had thrice declined to declare an emergency.

But this month a pastor died after travelling to Goma, a city of 2 million and a gateway to other countries in the region. On Wednesday, the WHO reported a fisherwoman had died in Congo after four vomiting incidents at a market in Uganda, where 590 people may be sought for vaccination.

“The committee is concerned that a year into the outbreak, there are worrying signs of possible extension of the epidemic,” the committee's report said.

The committee had been under pressure from many experts who felt the scale of the outbreak and the risks meant it had to be given the emergency status - only the fifth such disease outbreak since the WHO introduced such designations in 2005.

“It shows no sign of coming under control,” said Peter Piot, a member of the team that discovered Ebola and is now director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

“I hope that today's decision serves as a wake-up call to drive high-level political action, improved coordination, and greater funding to support DRC in their efforts to stop this devastating epidemic,” he said.
No border closures

The previous international emergencies, under a system introduced after the 2004 Asian SARS epidemic, were the 2013-2016 West African Ebola epidemic that killed over 11,300 people, the 2009 flu pandemic, polio in 2014 and the Zika virus that caused a spate of birth defects across Latin America.

The WHO committee's chairman, Robert Steffen, tempered the outbreak's designation as an emergency by saying it remained a regional, rather than a global threat, and stressed that no country should react to Ebola by closing borders or restricting trade.

The WHO has warned that the nearby countries of Rwanda, South Sudan, Burundi and Uganda are the most at risk, while Central African Republic, Angola, Tanzania, Republic of Congo and Zambia are in a second tier.

Earlier this week, the WHO said hundreds of millions of dollars were needed immediately to prevent the outbreak billowing out of control and costing far more lives and money.

But WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who convened the emergency committee after viewing the Goma case as a “potential game-changer”, said the designation as an international emergency was not meant to suggest that some countries had been withholding funds and would now unlock them.

One priority was to accelerate production of the vaccine, which is in short supply. It is produced by Merck and still unlicensed, which means it can only be used in a clinical trial overseen by Congo's health ministry.

WHO has already begun using smaller doses to ration supplies and the committee recommended taking “all measures to increase supplies”, including contracting supply to other manufacturers and transferring Merck's technology.

https://www.thehindubusinessline.com...le28537705.ece

[baldrick]

and ?.

[QUOTE]
Measles is killing more people in the DRC than Ebola—and faster
"Frankly, I am embarrassed to talk only about Ebola," WHO director-general says.

As the world anxiously monitors the outbreak of Ebola in Democratic Republic of the Congo, health officials note that a measles outbreak declared last month in the country has killed more people—mostly children—and faster.

Since January 2019, officials have recorded over 100,000 measles cases in the DRC, mostly in children, and nearly 2,000 have died. The figures surpass those of the latest Ebola outbreak in the country, which has tallied not quite 2,500 cases and 1,665 deaths since August 2018. The totals were noted by World Health Organization Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, in a speech today, July 15, at the United Nations Office in Geneva, Switzerland.
"Frankly, I am embarrassed to talk only about Ebola," Dr. Tedros said (he goes by his first name). He gave the speech in response to two new developments in the Ebola outbreak. That is that two Ebola responders were murdered in their home in the DRC city of Beni and that officials on Sunday had identified the first case of Ebola in Goma, a DRC city of over one million at the border with Rwanda.

"Both of these events encapsulate the challenges we continue to face on a daily basis in DRC," he said. Tedros was referring to the scattering of disease—including Ebola and measles—as violence hampers outbreak responses and access to medical care. Since January, officials have counted 198 attacks on health responders, which left seven dead and 58 healthcare workers and patients injured.
[/QUOTE]

http://arstechnica.com/science/2019/...la-and-faster/

[harrybarracuda]

Jesus fucking wept, I don't know what's worse, the infections or the fact that they are attacking the people trying to help them.