Ebola in DR Congo sees record first-month caseload
The UN says the DR Congo has reported 1,000 Ebola cases, the most ever in the first month of any Ebola outbreak in Africa. Meanwhile
The UN says the DR Congo has reported 1,000 Ebola cases, the most ever in the first month of any Ebola outbreak in Africa. Meanwhile, Kenya's health minister says he is halting a US-backed Ebola quarantine center. A senior World Health Organization (WHO) official told a briefing in Geneva on Tuesday that the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) had the highest number of confirmed cases in its first month of any Ebola outbreak in Africa. Officials have confirmed as of Monday more than 1,000 cases and 267 deaths from the current outbreak of the comparatively rare Bundibugyo ebolavirus. "This is the largest number of confirmed cases in the first month of an Ebola disease outbreak in Africa," said the WHO's director of health emergency alert and response operations, Abdirahman Mahamud, in a press release. The WHO formally confirmed the outbreak on May 15, but experts believe it had been likely circulating for weeks or months prior to that. Dozens of cases confirmed at eastern Congo displacement camps "The response needs to expand to keep pace with the expanding outbreak — this is beginning to happen," the WHO's Mahamud said after returning from a visit last week to the Bunia treatment center in the outbreak's epicenter.
Cases have now also been confirmed in at least three of war torn eastern Congo's crowded displacement camps. The International Organization for Migration's Abdoulaye Wone said at the same Geneva briefing on Tuesday that 25 cases had been confirmed at the camps, including 14 deaths. There have been more than 20 Ebola outbreaks across Africa since the 1970s, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The most deadly pair were in West Africa, in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, killing 11,000 people between 2014 and 2016 and another in Congo starting in 2018 with 2,229 recorded deaths. The Ebola survivors of DR Congo To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Kenya orders halt to construction of US-backed Ebola quarantine facility Meanwhile, Kenya's Health Minister Aden Duale assured a Kenyan court on Tuesday that he had ordered an immediate halt to the construction of a US-backed Ebola quarantine facility at an air base. Duale had been found in contempt of court on Monday for failing to observe previous orders to suspend the construction pending an evaluation by the judiciary. The tented facility in the central town of Nanyuki was supposed to serve as a treatment center for US nationals should any contract Ebola amid the outbreak in the DR Congo.
The BriefWire