Ebola Virus Disease

1. Situation Update The outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in North Kivu and Ituri provinces, Democratic Republic of the Congo continues this past week, with a steady and sustained transmission intensity. While the security situation remained relatively calm in the Butembo/Katwa area, there was a resumption of violent community resistance incidents in Beni, coinciding with increased cases and response activities. Armed groups’ movements continued to be reported in Musienene and Manguredjipa, impacting on access to the Kambau health area, neighbouring Mabalako’s hotspot health area, Aloya. The overall security situation in Ituri (Bunia, Komanda) remains tense following the spate of attacks in early June 2019. Indicators over the past few weeks demonstrated early signs of transmission easing in intensity in some major hotspots such as Butembo and Katwa. However, concerns remain over the concurrent increase in the number of new cases occurring in areas that previously had lower rate...

At least half of all Ebola outbreaks have gone undetected since the virus was first reported in 1976, researchers estimated. “Emerging infectious diseases are often not investigated in rural Africa unless outbreaks involve a sizeable number of cases. A number of different Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreaks have been reported in the literature and in surveillance reports since its discovery in 1976. The majority of the reports are of large outbreaks,” Emm a E. Glennon , a PhD student in the department of veterinary medicine at the University of Cambridge, and colleagues wrote. “Given the low reported rate of transmission of Ebola, and the high frequency with which cases infect no one else, one might expect most outbreaks to be very small (fewer than five people). This is the first study to the authors’ knowledge that quantitatively estimates the number of undetected EVD outbreaks or probabilities of EVD outbreak detection by outbreak size.” Glennon and colleagues based their esti...

Workers wearing protective clothing bury Agnes Mbambu, who died of Ebola. The 50-year-old grandmother of a 5-year-old boy who became Ebola's first cross-border victim, lived in the village of Karambi, near the border with Congo, in western Uganda. (Ronald Kabuubi/AP) June 25 at 6:00 AM Public health authorities have recorded more than 2,000 cases in the ongoing Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo . Last week, a 5-year-old boy died of Ebola in neighboring Uganda, signifying the outbreak has spread across the border. The latest update published by the World Health Organization (WHO) suggests the Congolese outbreak is not close to ending — the number of new cases is actually on the rise. [ Ebola has spread for nearly a year in Congo. Officials are scrambling to ‘reset’ the response. ] This is the second-deadliest Ebola outbreak on record. In the 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic in West Africa, health authorities recorded more than 28,000 cases , and more than 11,000 people died. Why has th...

The number of new Ebola cases reported daily by the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) continued its steady rise over the past 3 days, with 35 new cases reported, 2 of them in Bunia, the capital of Ituri province, which is home to about 366,000 people. Bunia cases draw health minister visit The resurgence of cases in Bunia—the second-largest city in the eastern DRC—follows the detection of an imported case. Over the weekend, DRC health minister Oly Ilunga Kalenga, MD, visited the city to meet with provincial officials to assess the status of the response in the area, according the DRC health ministry's update yesterday. Last week, the health ministry reported a case in Bunia, involving a contact of an earlier case in Rwampara health zone who had refused follow-up and vaccination. In March, the city reported an infection in a 6-month-old baby. The recent cases bring the total in the city to four. The city has been preparing for the arrival of more cases for several months a...

Workers wearing protective clothing bury Agnes Mbambu, who died of Ebola. The 50-year-old grandmother of a 5-year-old boy who became Ebola's first cross-border victim, lived in the village of Karambi, near the border with Congo, in western Uganda. (Ronald Kabuubi/AP) June 25 at 6:00 AM Public health authorities have recorded more than 2,000 cases in the ongoing Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo . Last week, a 5-year-old boy died of Ebola in neighboring Uganda, signifying the outbreak has spread across the border. The latest update published by the World Health Organization (WHO) suggests the Congolese outbreak is not close to ending — the number of new cases is actually on the rise. [ Ebola has spread for nearly a year in Congo. Officials are scrambling to ‘reset’ the response. ] This is the second-deadliest Ebola outbreak on record. In the 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic in West Africa, health authorities recorded more than 28,000 cases , and more than 11,000 people died. Why has th...

At least half of all Ebola outbreaks have gone undetected since the virus was first reported in 1976, researchers estimated. “Emerging infectious diseases are often not investigated in rural Africa unless outbreaks involve a sizeable number of cases. A number of different Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreaks have been reported in the literature and in surveillance reports since its discovery in 1976. The majority of the reports are of large outbreaks,” Emm a E. Glennon , a PhD student in the department of veterinary medicine at the University of Cambridge, and colleagues wrote. “Given the low reported rate of transmission of Ebola, and the high frequency with which cases infect no one else, one might expect most outbreaks to be very small (fewer than five people). This is the first study to the authors’ knowledge that quantitatively estimates the number of undetected EVD outbreaks or probabilities of EVD outbreak detection by outbreak size.” Glennon and colleagues based their esti...

Medical Xpress : Ebola death toll breaks 1,500 mark in DRC “More than 1,500 people have died in a nearly 10-month-old outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the health ministry said Monday. As of Sunday, 1,506 people have died out of 2,239 recorded cases, it said…” (6/24). Additional coverage of the Ebola outbreak and response in DRC, as well as past outbreaks, experimental therapies, and funding, is available from Associated Press , CNN , The Economist , Nature , NPR , Ottawa Citizen , and Quartz Africa . http://bit.ly/31UQKlM

11:29 AM ET Associated Press NEW YORK -- Unable to send disease fighters to help battle one of the deadliest Ebola outbreaks in history, U.S. health officials are turning to basketball Hall of Famer Dikembe Mutombo for help. Mutombo, regarded as one of the greatest defensive players in NBA history and a well-known philanthropist in his native Congo, recorded radio and video spots designed to persuade people to take precautions and get care that might stop the disease's spread. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began posting the spots Monday on the agency's YouTube channel and website. Officials are trying to get radio and TV stations in the Democratic Republic of Congo to air them. About 2,200 people have been reported ill -- and about 1,500 have died -- since an Ebola outbreak was declared in August 2018 in eastern Congo. It is the second-deadliest outbreak of the lethal virus, which jumps from person to person quickly through close contact with bo...

Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo, 24 June 2019 – “You can’t take my son away because I know you will go kill him. You will inject him with Ebola. That’s what everybody here knows.” This response from an angry father, faced with the possibility that his son would be moved from a local hospital to an Ebola Treatment Centre, reflects the reality of containing an epidemic in an area where folklore, rumour and suspicion of outsiders abound. For Dr. Ramses Kalumbi, Surveillance Team Leader for the World Health Organization (WHO) in Goma, reassuring his patients and their families is all in a day’s work. Empathy, patience and compassion are a vital part of the treatment offered by his team of doctors, psychologists and health workers. The Ebola-affected city of Butembo, where the 27-year-old man has been working as a driver, is 350km away – an eight-hour journey by road. He had returned home to visit his family when he started to feel unwell. Initial symptoms indicated malaria but ...

If Florida Kayindo hadn’t contracted Ebola herself, she wouldn’t believe that it existed. The 36-year-old grins with bemusement thinking about all the rumors she’s heard. “In the beginning people thought Ebola wasn’t a real illness, it was brought in by white people,” she explains. “White people are evil, that’s what people in the community believe,” Kayindo tells TIME. “Before Ebola white people were around, but now they’re thinking white people came with Ebola.” Kayindo was declared Ebola free in November 2018 and since then she has been working in a childcare center on the grounds of Beni General Hospital, in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, North Kivu province, close to where the Ebola outbreak began last August. Like other survivors, she has antibodies that mean she can’t get sick from the virus again, and is now being paid to care for the children of others who are undergoing treatment. Despite her experience with the virus, Kayindo occasionally appears to question ...

Kampala, 21 June 2019:— As of today, Uganda has not registered any new confirmed Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) case in Kasese District or any other part of Uganda since the last registered case one week ago. There are no new suspect cases under admission. Currently, 110 contacts to the confirmed Ebola cases in Kagando and Bwera are being followed up daily. A total of 456 individuals have been vaccinated against EVD using the 'Ebola-rVSV' vaccine in Kasese District, Western Uganda. The vaccination exercise is currently taking place in the 13 areas of; Buhuna 2, Bwera Hospital, Kagando 1, Kaserengete, Kayantsi II, Kirembo, Lhibira Town Council, Mushenene 2, Ndongo, Nyamambuka II, Nyamatunga, Rusese Barracks and Rwenguhyo. The 'Ebola-rVSV' vaccine is administered to contacts to the confirmed cases and non-vaccinated frontline health and other workers, the most high risk population to protect them against the deadly Ebola - Zaire virus strain. Yesterday, 20th June 2019, a...

Kampala, 21 June 2019:— As of today, Uganda has not registered any new confirmed Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) case in Kasese District or any other part of Uganda since the last registered case one week ago. There are no new suspect cases under admission. Currently, 110 contacts to the confirmed Ebola cases in Kagando and Bwera are being followed up daily. A total of 456 individuals have been vaccinated against EVD using the 'Ebola-rVSV' vaccine in Kasese District, Western Uganda. The vaccination exercise is currently taking place in the 13 areas of; Buhuna 2, Bwera Hospital, Kagando 1, Kaserengete, Kayantsi II, Kirembo, Lhibira Town Council, Mushenene 2, Ndongo, Nyamambuka II, Nyamatunga, Rusese Barracks and Rwenguhyo. The 'Ebola-rVSV' vaccine is administered to contacts to the confirmed cases and non-vaccinated frontline health and other workers, the most high risk population to protect them against the deadly Ebola - Zaire virus strain. Yesterday, 20th June 2019, a...

Kampala, 21 June 2019:— As of today, Uganda has not registered any new confirmed Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) case in Kasese District or any other part of Uganda since the last registered case one week ago. There are no new suspect cases under admission. Currently, 110 contacts to the confirmed Ebola cases in Kagando and Bwera are being followed up daily. A total of 456 individuals have been vaccinated against EVD using the 'Ebola-rVSV' vaccine in Kasese District, Western Uganda. The vaccination exercise is currently taking place in the 13 areas of; Buhuna 2, Bwera Hospital, Kagando 1, Kaserengete, Kayantsi II, Kirembo, Lhibira Town Council, Mushenene 2, Ndongo, Nyamambuka II, Nyamatunga, Rusese Barracks and Rwenguhyo. The 'Ebola-rVSV' vaccine is administered to contacts to the confirmed cases and non-vaccinated frontline health and other workers, the most high risk population to protect them against the deadly Ebola - Zaire virus strain. Yesterday, 20th June 2019, a...

By Tom Odula | AP June 17 NAIROBI, Kenya — Kenya remains free from Ebola as test results show that a sick woman does not have the deadly hemorrhagic fever, while neighboring Uganda and Congo battle a stubborn outbreak of the disease. Kenya’s Health Minister Sicily Kariuki Monday announced that a patient isolated at the Kericho County Referral Hospital does not have Ebola. “The results of tests carried out by the Kenya Medical Research Institute laboratories on the 36-year-old lady currently admitted in the isolation unit of the Kericho County Referral hospital have been confirmed to be negative for the Ebola virus disease and other hemorrhagic fevers,” Kariuki said in a statement. The woman showed some symptoms of Ebola after travelling from Malaba on the Kenya-Uganda border, sparking fears that Congo’s current outbreak had spread to Kenya. The outbreak in eastern Congo has killed more than 1,400 people since August and last week it spread to neighboring Uganda where two p...

By: Mark Leon Goldberg on June 20, 2019 According to the latest estimates from the World Health Organization, an outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo has killed over 1400 people. This makes it the second worst ebola outbreak in history, following the 2014 outbreak in West Africa that killed over 11,000 people. The current outbreak in the DRC is so far confined to the eastern part of the country, which has long been beset by insecurity and violence. There were, however, two cases reported over the border of Uganda from a family that contracted the disease while attending a funeral in the DRC. This marked the first time that this outbreak crossed an international border which brought this long festering outbreak back into the news. On the line to discuss some of the international efforts to halt the spread of ebola is Ambassador John Lange. He is a retired US Ambassador and currently serves as the senior fellow for global health diplomacy at the United Nations Found...

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The World Health Organization has for a third time declined to declare the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which in the past week worryingly crept over the border into Uganda , a public health emergency — for technical reasons that may be correct. Such a declaration could have triggered unhelpful actions, such as suspension of flights to Congo or the closure of borders with neighbouring countries. Making the impoverished central African country a pariah would probably not help anyone.  If it is right not to panic, it would be equally wrong to be complacent. Make no mistake. What is happening in lawless eastern Congo — a region where poverty, violence and neglect are rife — is exceptionally dangerous. A tragedy in itself, it could yet ripple out much further afield.  This outbreak of Ebola, a disease that resides harmlessly in bats but becomes deadly in humans, is already the second-worst in history . Only the west African epidemic of 2014, which killed m...

June 20 at 4:06 PM BUTEMBO, Congo —  A dozen young men revved their motor­cycle engines in front of the wooden gate of a makeshift checkpoint — too impatient to have their temperatures checked or to wash their hands with chlorinated water. Health workers manning the post had little choice but to let them pass. Every day, thousands of people travel this road through the epicenter of Congo’s ongoing Ebola outbreak, where they are supposed to comply with field nurses toting gun-shaped thermometers testing for fevers. But that operation is far from perfect, and extinguishing the nearly year-old outbreak is months away at best. Days with a dozen new cases are normal.  “Ebola is like water. If you don’t build a perfect dam, even a small hole can lead to a flood of new cases,” said Marie Roseline Belizaire, the World Health Organization’s deputy manager for the response.  Health officials are confident the outbreak is not spiraling out of control but are worri...

* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation. How do you convince people to follow stringent rules to reduce contamination and report suspected cases when some do not believe in the disease in the first place? Alex Carle, British Red Cross director of programmes and partnerships. “The Ebola virus doesn't exist; it's a virus that was made to eliminate the Congolese.” “Ebola came as a gateway for several organizations that come to loot our minerals.” “To increase or expand the list of deaths at Ebola Treatment Centres, innocent people are accused of being sick.” These are just some of the thousands of rumours about the Ebola virus that the Red Cross teams  heard in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The country is now experiencing its worst outbreak in recent history, and the second deadliest outbreak globally in modern history. The response faces many challenges, from funding and resources, to acceptance from ...

Uganda (MNN) — The ongoing 10-month Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has claimed over 1,400 lives. Now, neighboring Uganda is getting nervous as the disease threatens to cross the border. People frequently travel between Uganda and DR Congo to visit family and attend markets. Time reports at least two people who returned to Uganda after visiting DR Congo have died from Ebola. Dr. Yona Kapere with Compassion International says no Ugandan children sponsored by the ministry have contracted Ebola. However, at least one child sponsored in the country has had a relative die from the disease. In Uganda, the World Health Organization (WHO) has identified at least 112 people who possibly came into contact with Ebola. By quarantining and immunizing these individuals, Uganda is trying to prevent its own outbreak. The country has also set up crossing points at the DR Congo border. Here people coming into Uganda are screened for the disease. “The Ministry of Health, together...