Ebola Virus Disease

Want the best of VICE News straight to your inbox? Sign up here. Authorities in the Congolese border city of Goma have confirmed a second case of Ebola, raising fears that the outbreak, now the second-deadliest ever, could cross the border into Rwanda. The second case, in a 46-year-old father of 10 from Ituri province, is thought to be unrelated to the first Goma case , according to local health officials. The man traveled hundreds of miles to Goma from a mining area in northeastern Congo on July 13 but didn’t start showing symptoms until July 22. He is now isolated at an Ebola treatment center. Authorities say they have significantly boosted measures to prevent the spread of the disease beyond the borders of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). This includes the vaccination of health workers in Rwanda, Uganda and South Sudan, 24-hour monitoring at Goma’s international airport, and the widespread use of an experimental but effective Ebola vaccine. Want the best of VICE News...

On July 17, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo a global public health emergency. The virus, which took hold in the region last year, has infected more than 2,600 people and killed 1,700. Craig Spencer, the director of global health in emergency medicine at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia Medical Center , questions whether the WHO took too long to declare the current outbreak a global health emergency. “As case numbers continue to climb,” said Dr. Spencer, who made headlines in 2014 when he contracted Ebola after returning from Guinea where he was working with Doctors Without Borders, “it’s reasonable to argue that this emergency should have been declared earlier.” We talked with Dr. Spencer about the challenges of bringing this epidemic under control, lessons learned and progress made in fighting and containing the virus. Q. Why did it take WHO so long to declare the current outbreak a global health emergency? A. Th...

Lisa Schlein contributed to this report from Geneva. Officials in the Democratic Republic of Congo say the person who was confirmed as the second case of Ebola in the city of Goma has died. The announcement was made Wednesday, a day after the latest case was first revealed. The case involved a man who traveled to Goma from a northeastern rural community in Ituri province. He was diagnosed a few days after arrival and was being treated at the Goma Ebola Treatment Center. Goma is home to more than a million people and lies directly on Congo’s border with Rwanda, where tens of thousands cross on foot daily. Earlier this month, a pastor tested positive and later died after arriving in Goma by bus, sparking fears the disease could spread quickly through the densely populated city. After that incident, the World Health Organization declared the Ebola epidemic in DR Congo’s conflict-ridden North Kivu and Ituri provinces a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.   More t...

Joint statement from WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock, UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore, and World Food Programme Executive Director David Beasley NEW YORK/GENEVA/KINSHASA/DAKAR/ROME, 31 July 2019 – “Tomorrow, 1 August, marks one year since the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) declared an outbreak of the Ebola virus disease in North Kivu province of the DRC. Two weeks ago, it was declared a public health emergency of international concern. “Just yesterday, a new case of the disease was confirmed in Goma, with the patient later dying – the second case to be confirmed this month in the city of around 1 million people. This latest case in such a dense population center underscores the very real risk of further disease transmission, perhaps beyond the country’s borders, and the very urgent need for a strengthened global response and increa...

[unable to retrieve full-text content] Officials feared Ebola would reach this transit hub. Now a second person has died of the disease    CNN A second person has died after contracting Ebola in Goma, a major transit hub in the Democratic Republic of Congo on the Rwandan border, according to ... https://ift.tt/333VmGO

From June 30–July 14, the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (GoDRC) reported confirmed Ebola virus disease (EVD) cases in three previously unaffected health zones, including Ituri Province’s Ariwara Health Zone—located near the DRC’s border with South Sudan and Uganda—and North Kivu Province’s capital city of Goma—located on the DRC–Rwanda border. On July 17, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) declared the EVD outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), citing recent events, including active transmission of EVD in eastern DRC and the first confirmed case in Goma. As the EVD outbreak continues to spread, relief actors have bolstered EVD preparedness activities in eastern DRC and the neighboring countries of Burundi, Rwanda, South Sudan, and Uganda. In July, USAID-supported EVD response partners trained health care workers on effective infection control and prevention protocols in North Kivu’s Beni Health Zone, as well as bolstered screenin...

A second case of Ebola was confirmed in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo's largest city, Goma, increasing concern the virus is establishing a foothold in the densely populated area. Goma's first Ebola case was detected in mid-July, prompting the UN's World Health Organization (WHO) to warn that the spread of the disease could accelerate. The epidemic has killed more than 1,700 people since it was declared almost a year ago, becoming the second-worst Ebola outbreak on record. The Ebola outbreak was declared a " public health emergency " by t he WHO on July 17.  The most recent person to be disgnosed with the disease started developing symptoms on July 22 after arriving from a mining area outside the city, a health official quoted the head of the DRC's Ebola response team, Jean-Jacques Muyembe, as saying in a statement on Tuesday.  Health officials said the patient, a man, was not connected to the first case in Goma who was a pastor who became...

The ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), recently declared a “public health emergency of international concern” by the WHO Director-General, is now second only to the West Africa outbreak of 2014-2015 in terms of number of cases and deaths. A new KFF explainer reviews the history of the outbreak in the DRC, which U.S. agencies are involved, how U.S. personnel are assisting, global response activities, and the role of vaccination in controlling the outbreak. U.S. engagement has been limited compared to the 2014-2015 West Africa outbreak, where the U.S played a leading role and mobilized an unprecedented amount of funding and personnel. The U.S. has chosen a more limited role in this outbreak due to security concerns as well as improvements in global capacity to respond to Ebola. So far, the U.S. has contributed $136 million for the response. The explainer also discusses how the U.S. government might change its approach and engagement in the DRC going f...

BENI, Congo (AP) — Two-month-old Lahya Kathembo became an orphan in a day. Her mother succumbed to Ebola on a Saturday morning. By sunset her father was dead, too. They had been sick for more than a week before health workers finally persuaded them to seek treatment, neighbors said. They believed their illness was the work of people jealous about their newborn daughter, a community organizer said, and sought the guidance of a traditional spiritual healer. The Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo is ravaging Beni, a sprawling city of some 600,000, in large part because so many of the sick are choosing to stay at home. In doing so, they unknowingly infect caregivers and those who mourn them. “People are waiting until the last minute to bring their family members and when they do it’s complicated for us,” says Mathieu Kanyama, head of health promotion at the Ebola treatment center in Beni run by the Alliance for International Medical Action, or ALIMA. “Here there are doctors, not magician...

Key Points Nearly 2,700 cases, including almost 1,800 deaths, have been reported to date in the ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), making it second only to the 2014-2015 West Africa outbreak that saw nearly 29,000 cases and claimed more than 11,300 lives. The outbreak has already lasted about a year, having been first declared by the DRC Ministry of Health on August 1, 2018. Recently, three imported cases were reported in neighboring Uganda, and there are ongoing concerns about further cross-border spread outside the DRC. On July 17, 2019, the WHO Director-General declared the outbreak a “public health emergency of international concern” (PHEIC), citing its duration and recent spread to populated areas (including a case in Goma, a large city bordering Rwanda) where risk of further transmission and potential to cross international borders is high. This was the fourth time the World Health Organization (WHO) had considered such a declaration, after decli...

The current Ebola epidemic has grown rapidly since April in the Democratic Republic of Congo, killing more than  1,700 people, with 2,438 confirmed cases . The outbreak was declared a level three emergency almost a year ago and was recently declared a public health emergency by the World Health Organization (WHO). The threat is compounded by the first confirmed case in Goma, a hub city with a population of two million people.   This is the DRC’s 10th Ebola outbreak in 40 years and a reminder of the 2014-2016 outbreak in West Africa, which concluded with  15,261 confirmed cases and 11,325 deat hs , spreading from Guinea to Liberia and Sierra Leone and eventually to Italy, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. In addition to the massive human cost, the World Bank  estimated Ebola costs of $2.8 billion in 2015 GDP for the initial three countries. Similar outbreaks of other diseases, including Zika, Swine Flu, Avian and Inf...

One-year after the beginning of the complex outbreak in the volatile eastern part of the DRC – and ten days since the “alarming confirmation of a first case in Goma, the region’s biggest city, with some two million people” – WFP ’s Spokesperson Herve Verhoosel said that the UN agency is “stepping up preparations for a potential further escalation of the epidemic”. Over the next six months, WFP will nearly double its food assistance and nutritional support to 440,000 Ebola-affected people in DR Congo, Mr. Verhoosel announced, adding that this would include “primarily contacts of victims and their families, as well as confirmed and suspected cases”. According to estimates, expected new contacts are at roughly 50 per case, which equals a total of 75,000 contacts in the next five months. Speaking to journalists in Geneva, he said that given the challenges of “tracing contacts in the conflict zone that is eastern DRC, food distributions are key to the containment effort, helpin...

USAID : Democratic Republic of the Congo — Ebola Outbreak This fact sheet highlights key developments of the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and provides an overview of the current situation, including details on insecurity, health, preparedness and prevention efforts, food security, and humanitarian funding for the response (7/29). https://ift.tt/2KcwF2p

GENEVA - The United Nations' Children's Fund, or UNICEF, reports an unprecedented number of children in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo are being infected with Ebola and many are dying from this deadly disease. Children account for more than 700 of the 2,671 reported cases of Ebola. UNICEF health specialist Jerome Pfaffman says more than half of the youngsters infected with this deadly disease are below the age of five.   Pfaffman, who has just completed his third tour of duty in northeast Congo, calls this number unprecedented. He says it is proportionally higher than the number of children who were infected in the 2014 West African outbreak, which affected about 28,000 people, killing more than 11,000. "When I left there were 12 new confirmed cases," he said. "Five were alive and will have the chance to access treatment, but seven had died in the community. This is bad. Having this number of community deaths means we are not ahead of the epidemic....

This week, the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's (DRC's) North Kivu and Ituri provinces will hit the 1-year anniversary of its start, but a surge of cases over the weekend gives little hope the outbreak is close to contained. Since the end of last week, the DRC has recorded 41 more cases of the deadly virus, including 12 cases confirmed today. According to the World Health Organization's (WHO's) online Ebola dashboard, the outbreak total now stands at 2,671 cases. The dashboard also recorded a total of 1,782 deaths, an increase in 20 fatalities over the weekend. So far the DRC president's office, which last week shifted outbreak response activities to its technical group, has not issued any detailed daily updates following the resignation of the country's health minister. UN steps up efforts in South Sudan, DRC As the outbreak marches on, UNICEF, the United Nation's (UN's) children fund, announced it was ramping up efforts in ...

This week, the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's (DRC's) North Kivu and Ituri provinces will hit the 1-year anniversary of its start, but a surge of cases over the weekend gives little hope the outbreak is close to contained. Since the end of last week, the DRC has recorded 41 more cases of the deadly virus, including 12 cases confirmed today. According to the World Health Organization's (WHO's) online Ebola dashboard, the outbreak total now stands at 2,671 cases. The dashboard also recorded a total of 1,782 deaths, an increase in 20 fatalities over the weekend. So far the DRC president's office, which last week shifted outbreak response activities to its technical group, has not issued any detailed daily updates following the resignation of the country's health minister. UN steps up efforts in South Sudan, DRC As the outbreak marches on, UNICEF, the United Nation's (UN's) children fund, announced it was ramping up efforts in ...