Ebola Virus Disease

CIDRAP News : Experts: DRC Ebola outbreak fueled by attacks “By early February 2019, transmission of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC’s) Ituri province was largely under control, and declines were observed in Katwa and Butembo, several leading experts on the outbreak wrote [Wednesday] in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). But a sudden increase in violent attacks on health care workers and facilities throughout North Kivu province have caused the outbreak to spike in the last 2 months and become intractable…” (Soucheray, 5/30). New Humanitarian : Aid community raises highest alert on Ebola “U.N. and leading aid groups on Wednesday took the step of formally declaring that the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo needs a major scale-up from the humanitarian community. A spokesperson for the U.N.’s emergency aid coordination body, OCHA, confirmed the decision of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee, which it chairs. The move can unlock stronge...

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FILE PHOTO: Rachel Kahindo, Ebola survivor working as a caregiver to babies who are confirmed Ebola cases, holds an infant outside the red zone at the Ebola treatment centre in Butembo By Stephanie Nebehay GENEVA (Reuters) - Children under five infected with Ebola in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo are dying at a higher rate than other patients as their parents shun special treatment centres, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday. Three out of four of the under-fives, or 77%, are succumbing to the disease, compared with 57% for older youngsters and 67% for all infected people, the U.N. body said in a new analysis of the epidemic - the world's second worst on record. Many under-fives are not taken to Ebola treatment centres, known as ETCs, where survival rates are markedly higher, but instead visit multiple healthcare facilities that are not as well-equipped to provide treatment or isolation, the WHO said in a weekly update. This "may be out o...

SITUATION OVERVIEW On August 1, 2018, the Ministry of Health of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) declared that an outbreak of the Ebola virus had occurred in the North Kivu (Kivu Nord) and Ituri provinces. As of May 29, 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported 1,851 confirmed cases of Ebola, with 1,208 confirmed deaths. This is the world’s second largest Ebola outbreak in recorded history and the largest ever in the DRC. The outbreak is occurring in a region rife with insecurity. Multiple armed groups engaged in regional ethnic struggles have caused large-scale displacement, with more than 1 million internally displaced people in North Kivu province alone. Several attacks have been launched against health facilities and workers, resulting in the looting and burning of clinics, and kidnapping and murder of staff. The violence targeting health workers and facilities forced the suspension of Ebola response activities for a week in April. Adding to the peril, the Ebola-...

By early February 2019, transmission of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's (DRC's) Ituri province was largely under control, and declines were observed in Katwa and Butembo, several leading experts on the outbreak wrote yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine ( NEJM ). But a sudden increase in violent attacks on healthcare workers and facilities throughout North Kivu province have caused the outbreak to spike in the last 2 months and become intractable. The experts, including DRC Minister of Health Oly Ilunga Kalenga, MD, and the World Health Organization (WHO) African regional director, Matshidiso Moeti, MD, published a special report on the 10-month-long outbreak, the world's second largest. "Numerous operational challenges posed by chronic insecurity are compounded by political tensions associated with contested national elections. Violence has increasingly been targeted at EVD response teams and facilities, exacerbating the spread of the ...

Summary Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) declared their tenth outbreak of Ebola in 40 years on 1 August 2018. The outbreak is centred in the northeast of the country. With the number of cases passing 1,000, it is now by far the country's largest-ever Ebola outbreak. It is also the second-biggest Ebola epidemic ever recorded, behind the West Africa outbreak of 2014-2016. Latest figures - information as of 29 May 2019; figures provided by DRC Ministry of Health. 1,945 TOTAL CASES 1,851 CONFIRMED CASES 1,208 CONFIRMED DEATHS Retrospective investigations point to a possible start of the outbreak back in May 2018 – around the same time as the Equateur outbreak earlier in the year. There is no connection or link between the two outbreaks. The delay in the alert and subsequent response can be attributed to several factors, including a breakdown of the surveillance system due to the security context (there are limitations on movement, and access is difficult) and a strike by t...

Summary Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) declared their tenth outbreak of Ebola in 40 years on 1 August 2018. The outbreak is centred in the northeast of the country. With the number of cases passing 1,000, it is now by far the country's largest-ever Ebola outbreak. It is also the second-biggest Ebola epidemic ever recorded, behind the West Africa outbreak of 2014-2016. Latest figures - information as of 29 May 2019; figures provided by DRC Ministry of Health. 1,945 TOTAL CASES 1,851 CONFIRMED CASES 1,208 CONFIRMED DEATHS Retrospective investigations point to a possible start of the outbreak back in May 2018 – around the same time as the Equateur outbreak earlier in the year. There is no connection or link between the two outbreaks. The delay in the alert and subsequent response can be attributed to several factors, including a breakdown of the surveillance system due to the security context (there are limitations on movement, and access is difficult) and a strike by t...

Today experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) said the ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is being fueled by violent security incidents. "The outbreak could be stopped … but without a secure environment it's not possible," said Matshidiso Moeti, MBBS, MSc, WHO regional director for Africa, in a teleconference today. Violent incidents have tripled The past 5 months have seen 174 attacks on health clinics and health workers, alike, Moeti said. The attacks have caused 5 deaths and 51 documented injuries. When compared with the first 5 months of the outbreak, which began last August, that's a tripling of violence, she said. Over the weekend, a community health worker near Mbalako was killed. The worker was trained to carry out response efforts in Vusahiro village. On the evening of the attack, three houses in the village were also burned. The attacks are the sole reason the outbreak is not coming to an end, Moeti said, as e...

Interruption of response and potential violence are the biggest threats to containing the ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the largest outbreak in the country since 1976, researchers found. This outbreak has featured organized attacks on the response efforts, specifically targeting medical facilities and healthcare personnel in violation of humanitarian laws, reported Annie Sparrow, MBBS, MD, of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, and colleagues. These attacks on Ebola treatment centers have had a "catastrophic" effect on Ebola containment efforts, resulting in patients often skipping follow-up and vaccination to escape the violence, the authors -- including World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Tedros A. Ghebreyesus, PhD -- wrote in a special report in the New England Journal of Medicine . Their findings matched those at a WHO press briefing Tuesday, where WHO officials discussed not only the drama...

More than a quarter of the confirmed and probable cases identified as of early April were children under 15, compared to 18% in the last major outbreak in West Africa in 2013-2016 By Alessandra Prentice BUTEMBO, Democratic Republic of Congo, May 30 (Reuters) - Eight-year-old Kennedy Muhindo was running a high fever and racked by stomach pain and diarrhoea. Health workers told him he had Ebola but his first thought was for his sister who had been battling the virus. "How is my big sister doing?" he asked health workers again and again at an Ebola treatment centre on the outskirts of Butembo, a major trading hub set amid volcanic hills in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Staff said they didn't have the heart to tell him that 9-year-old Lareine had died. "His sister was his best friend," said Desy Shabani, who provides psycho-social support to the patients. "To have lost the dearest person in his life... I asked myself, 'What will this child do...

Charities are urging authorities to increase Ebola prevention work to the highest level of emergency response in the DRC as the disease continues to spread at a rapid rate. More than 1,200 people have died from Ebola in the DRC with almost 2,000 reported cases since the outbreak began in August. Yemen, Syria and Mozambique have all been categorised as level-three response countries, and charities are urging authorities to do the same with the DRC. Whitney Elmer, country director of DRC for Mercy Corps, said that declaring the equivalent of a level-three emergency would bring “manifold benefits” to helping authorities control the Ebola outbreak. She told the Guardian: “There has never been an epidemic of this complexity or size in the DRC.” She said the crisis required a new structure in line with the scale of the outbreak. The global humanitarian coordination body, Inter-Agency Standing Committee will meet on Wednesday to consider increasing the emergency response to the Eb...

By Jamey Keaten and Krista Larson | AP May 28 at 12:29 PM GENEVA — The World Health Organization emphasized progress in the fight against Ebola in eastern Congo even as Doctors Without Borders warned Tuesday that efforts to trace new cases to previous ones are largely failing. WHO emergencies chief Dr. Michael Ryan told reporters in Geneva that disease surveillance has improved even as the number of attacks against health workers rose three-fold over the last five months. Five health workers have died since the outbreak began in August. “We’ve also managed to improve surveillance performance in terms of the proportion of cases coming off contact lists,” he said. Disease transmission has “decreased significantly” over the last couple of weeks in the epicenters of Butembo and Katwa though challenges remain there, he added. Doctors Without Borders, which pulled out of Ebola treatment centers in Butembo and Katwa earlier this year because of the violence, said contact tracing...

An Ebola epidemic thundering through heavily populated provinces in the northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo has sickened 1,877 people and killed 1,248 as of May 22, according to the World Health Organization—despite the efforts of specialist medical teams, an effective vaccine, and new treatments that are being tested in the region. The outbreak already is the second-largest on record, behind the epidemic that burned through West Africa from 2014 to 2016, killing more than 11,300 people . In its most extreme form, the viral hemorrhagic fever leads to uncontrollable bleeding and death. Clouds hover over Butembo as seen from the site of an attacked Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Ebola treatment centre on March 1, 2019. Aid workers have faced mistrust in some areas in the DRC as they seek to contain the Ebola outbreak, which has become the most severe in Congo’s history. The MSF treatment centre was the second site of such an attack following the Katwa centre, which was se...

GENEVA —  The United Nations has drawn up new measures to strengthen its response to the Ebola epidemic in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and put an end to the spread of this deadly virus, which already has claimed more than 1200 lives. The plan is top-heavy with senior officials who will oversee and coordinate U.N. and international efforts to come to grips with this virulent disease. The Ebola epidemic was declared 10 months ago in conflict-ridden North Kivu and Ituri provinces in eastern DRC. Since then, growing insecurity and community mistrust have hampered efforts to contain the virus, heightening the risk of the disease spreading to neighboring countries. To deal with this increasingly complex situation, World Health Organization spokesman Tarik Jasarevic says the U.N., in close cooperation with the DRC government and partners, is strengthening its political engagement, bolstering preparedness plans and increasing support for humanitarian coordination. “WHO is ad...

From childhood, Mulyanza Huguette was strong and lithe and loved to run long distances near her home in Butembo, in the North Kivu region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). She also loved working with children, so when she enrolled in Butembo’s Assumption College, she studied early childhood education. Huguette graduated from college in July 2018—and a month later, the World Health Organization officially declared that North Kivu was experiencing an outbreak of Ebola. So Huguette’s dream shifted: She went to work for UNICEF to educate communities about Ebola—how the viral hemorrhagic fever spreads, how early treatment can arrest it, and how delaying treatment can be fatal. In this central African nation of some 81 million, Huguette’s just one of many caught between the promise of new anti-Ebola measures and the barriers to their success: fear and ignorance of the disease, mistrust of foreign-run medical relief efforts, and general unrest fed by armed militias, poverty,...

The latest Ebola epidemic in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is the worst ever documented here and the second-largest Ebola outbreak recorded anywhere. As of May 22, more than 1,200 people have died from Ebola. Almost ten months into the outbreak, the number of people with confirmed cases of Ebola cases continues to increase and conditions in the affected areas are getting worse . Cases have been confirmed in North Kivu and Ituri provinces.  This is the country's tenth outbreak of the deadly virus in 40 years. DRC’s Ministry of Health officially declared the ongoing outbreak of Ebola virus disease in North Kivu on August 1, however the outbreak likely began months earlier.  Ebola situation report as of May 22, 2019 Total cases: 1,877 cases Confirmed: 1,789 Probable: 88 Total deaths: 1,248 Confirmed: 1,160 Probable: 88 *Data published by DRC Ministry of Health. "Probable" deaths refer to deaths that were linked to confirmed Ebola cases but not tested before...

GENEVA —  The United Nations has drawn up new measures to strengthen its response to the Ebola epidemic in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and put an end to the spread of this deadly virus, which already has claimed more than 1200 lives. The plan is top-heavy with senior officials who will oversee and coordinate U.N. and international efforts to come to grips with this virulent disease. The Ebola epidemic was declared 10 months ago in conflict-ridden North Kivu and Ituri provinces in eastern DRC. Since then, growing insecurity and community mistrust have hampered efforts to contain the virus, heightening the risk of the disease spreading to neighboring countries. To deal with this increasingly complex situation, World Health Organization spokesman Tarik Jasarevic says the U.N., in close cooperation with the DRC government and partners, is strengthening its political engagement, bolstering preparedness plans and increasing support for humanitarian coordination. “WHO is ad...

David Miliband: Well, you're making a really important point. This is a battle not just against a disease. It's a battle against fake news and it's a battle for public opinion. Absolutely key, the central lesson of the Ebola outbreaks that have happened before is winning the confidence of the community. And what's happened in this case is, clearly, this is an area of historic opposition to central government, and it's an area where the rumor mill about Ebola and how it's being spread is going in precisely the wrong direction. We need to reset the response, so that, instead of the engagement of the community coming as the last thing, it's actually the foundation of the response. It needs to be local people who are trained to do the prevention and control. It needs to be local people who are going around with the vaccine, because there is a vaccine in this case — 100,000 people have had it, but many more need to do so. Without that, you have this massive...

Your article ( Agencies plead for ceasefire as fresh Ebola epidemic spirals out of control in DRC , 15 May) brings home how essential community involvement and participation is in responding to outbreaks such as Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. When such crises emerge, a trusting relationship between responders and affected community members makes a vital difference to whether the response is effective. As shown in DRC, trust is not a given, which is one of the reasons why community engagement – involving local people in the development of the response from the very start – is so important. In conflict zones this is more difficult than in other emergencies, and yet even more important. This also holds true when conducting research during an outbreak – an essential part of the emergency response, as shown by the way research in the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak in West Africa led to the vaccine available in the current outbreak in DRC. Social science research is an essential p...

Efforts to stop the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo face a daunting obstacle: A multitude of local and national players are using the disease as a weapon in their struggle for power. AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo keeps getting worse. One of the main reasons - armed groups continue to attack Ebola responders. Today, the United Nations secretary-general created a new position, an emergency Ebola response coordinator, whose sole job is to keep health workers safe. It's a recognition that the only way to stop this outbreak is to stop violence against Ebola workers. NPR's Nurith Aizenman is here to talk about why. Nurith, we're 10 months into this outbreak. Where do things stand at this point? NURITH AIZENMAN, BYLINE: Well, it's very worrying. We've got nearly 1,900 people infected, 1,200 people dead, and over the last several weeks, the rate of new infections has jumped dramatically. We're s...