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Tag: Ebola

  • `Miracle’ baby survives Ebola outbreak

    `Miracle’ baby survives Ebola outbreak

    There is a ray of hope amid the death and misery that is Congo’s ebola crisis and her name is baby Benedicte.

    The six-week-old infant has been dubbed “a miracle’’ by Congo’s Ministry of Health for surviving Ebola which she caught as a newborn.

    “The little girl is called Benedicte and she was born on Oct. 31, so she’s about one and a half months old,’’ Jessica Ilunga, a spokesperson for the ministry told dpa on Friday.

    Sadly, Benedicte’s mother died during childbirth while also infected with Ebola which has so far killed more than 300 people in eastern Congo.

    Benedicte received 24-hour care throughout her hospitalisation and is the youngest person to recover from the virus in this outbreak, the ministry said.

    She is now home with her father and aunt.

  • Ebola virus infects 300 people in eastern Congo

    The deadly Ebola virus has infected 300 people in Congo since an outbreak erupted almost two months ago in the country’s east, the health ministry said on Tuesday.

    Ebola is a deadly disease caused by a virus, though there are five strains, and four of them can make people sick.

    After entering the body, it kills cells, making some of them explode, it wrecks the immune system, causes heavy bleeding inside the body, and damages almost every organ, though it is scary, but it’s also rare.

    “The virus has killed 186 people in the North Kivu and Ituri regions, while 88 others have been cured,’’ the ministry said on Monday.

    According to authorities, about 26,000 people in the central African nation have meanwhile received a vaccine to prevent Ebola.

    Earlier this month, the health ministry said it will install health checkpoints at the entrances to all polling stations in Congo’s Ebola-affected region during the December presidential election, when millions of Congolese are expected to come out to vote.

    The outbreak is concentrated in a region where numerous militia groups are fighting over Congo’s rich natural resources.

    Besides militia attacks that have hindered health workers, the region’s high population density and movements across the borders to Uganda and Rwanda pose additional risks that the highly lethal fever disease could spread in the region.

    The outbreak began shortly after the government declared an end to another outbreak in the west of the country in June and lauded those involved for managing to swiftly contain the spread of the disease.

     

  • Congolese doctor infected with Ebola in high insecurity zone

    A doctor in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo is hospitalised with Ebola, and 97 of his contacts have been identified in an area almost entirely surrounded by armed militia, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday.

    “It is the first time we have a confirmed case and contacts in an area of high insecurity.

    “It is really the problem we were anticipating and at same time dreading,” Dr. Peter Salama, WHO deputy director-general for emergency preparedness and response, told a news conference.

    The town of Oicha is almost entirely surrounded by Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) Ugandan Islamist militia, there are “extremely serious security concerns”, he said, adding that the group held hostages.

    NAN reports that authorities said 61 people have died in the latest outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

    The health ministry’s General Directorate for Combatting Disease said 103 cases of Ebola had been recorded in the eastern DRC as of Aug. 22, 76 of which had been confirmed by laboratory tests.

    Of the 103 cases, there were 61 deaths, 34 of which been confirmed by lab tests, while 27 others were considered “probable” cases of Ebola.

    The outbreak began on Aug. 1 in Mangina in North Kivu province, and cases have been reported in neighbouring Ituri province.

    It is the 10th outbreak to strike the DRC since 1976, when Ebola was first identified and named after a river in the north of the country.

    The health ministry added that “four additional experimental therapeutic molecules” had been approved by its ethics committee for treating infected patients.

    Their laboratory names are ZMapp; Remdesivir; Favipiravir; and Regn3450 – 3471 – 3479.

    The drugs — which have not been licensed but undergone safety trials — add to a prototype treatment called mAb114, whose use was announced on Aug. 14.

    The first therapeutic drug against the virus to be used in an active Ebola epidemic in the DRC, mAB114, has so far been given to 10 patients “who are responding positively,” the ministry said.

    Developed in the United States, the prototype drug is a so-called single monoclonal antibody — a protein that binds on to a specific target of the virus and triggers the body’s immune system to destroy the invader.

    The experimental treatments are being used alongside an unlicensed vaccine called rVSV-ZEBOV, which was shown to be safe and effective in previous trials in an Ebola epidemic in West Africa.

    Immunisation with rVSV-ZEBOV has been given to 2,179 front-line health workers, the ministry said.

    The WHO has expressed concern that the violence in the province Kivu — entailing militias who often fight for control of resources, including a notorious Ugandan rebel force called the ADF, — could hamper the fight against rolling back the disease.

    The outbreak in eastern DRC was declared a week after WHO and the government hailed the end of a flareup in northwestern Equateur province, at the other end of the vast country, which killed 33 people.

    The government has earmarked 43 million dollars to fight the latest scare.

    Ebola is a highly contagious haemorrhagic fever caused by a virus which is believed to have a natural home in species of tropical bats.

    It causes serious illness including vomiting, diarrhoea and in some cases internal and external bleeding. It is often fatal.

    In the worst Ebola epidemic, the disease struck the West African states of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone from 2013 to 2015, killing more than 11,300 people.

     

  • Uganda opens Ebola treatment units at border with DRC

    Uganda has opened two Ebola treatment units in the border districts with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a World Health Organisation (WHO) official said.

    Yonas Woldemariam, WHO Representative in Uganda, told Xinhua that the two treatment units have been established in the western border districts of Kasese and Bundibugyo to respond to any deadly Ebola hemorrhagic fever alert case or outbreak.

    He said the units are fully equipped and ready to manage any Ebola case in the east African country.

    “Ebola Treatment Units are where patients can get the best care possible – with access to rehydration methods and protection from infecting their family and community,” said Woldemariam.

    Although there is no confirmed Ebola case in Uganda, the country remains on high alert following an outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever in neighbouring DRC.

    A WHO situation report dated Aug. 20 said of the 59 deaths from the hemorrhagic fever in the DRC, 32 were confirmed and 27 were probable.

    The Ebola virus is highly contagious and can cause a range of symptoms including fever, vomiting, diarrhea, generalized pain and in many cases internal and external bleeding.

    Mortality rates of Ebola fever, according to WHO, are high, with the human case fatality rate ranging from 50 per cent to 89 per cent, depending on viral sub-type.

     

  • Congo approves more experimental Ebola treatments as cases rise

    Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)has approved four more experimental treatments against the deadly Ebola virus, the health ministry said as it raced to contain an outbreak in its violence-torn east.

    Health authorities on Aug. 11, started administering the U.S.-developed mAb114 treatment to Ebola patients, the first time such a treatment had been used against an active outbreak.

    The DRC health ministry said in a daily bulletin that the 10 patients who received mAb114 since Aug. 11 have experienced a “positive evolution”, but the outbreak has continued to grow.

    The four additional treatments approved by Congo’s ethics committee are Remdesivir, made by Israel’s Gilead Sciences; ZMapp, an intravenous treatment made by San Diego’s Mapp Pharmaceutical; Japanese drug Favipiravir; and one referred to as “Regn3450 – 3471 – 3479”.

    Remdesivir was administered to its first patient in the town of Beni on Tuesday, who is doing well, the ministry said in its bulletin.

    The ministry said six new cases and four new deaths have been confirmed from the haemmorhagic fever, which causes vomiting and severe diarrhea.

    That brings the total number of deaths to 59 and confirmed cases to 75 since July.

    Congo, whose heavily forested interior makes its a natural home for Ebola, is at the forefront of a global campaign to combat the virus, which killed more than 11,000 people when it swept through West Africa from 2013 to 2016.

    The Central African country has experienced ten Ebola outbreaks since the virus was discovered in northern Congo in 1976, more than twice as many as any other country and 33 people died in a flare-up in the northwest that ended last month.

    In addition, a vaccine manufactured by Merck, which proved effective against the earlier outbreak in northwestern Congo, has been administered to 1,693 health workers and contacts of Ebola patients.

    Insecurity in Congo’s eastern borderlands with Uganda has continued to complicate the response, with some contacts of Ebola patients located in so-called “red-zones”, which are off limits to emergency responders due to militia activity.

    Instead, local health workers in those areas are monitoring the contacts and no Ebola cases have yet been confirmed there.

     

  • Congo battles to contain ebola outbreak in conflict zone – Official

    Authorities in troubled eastern Congo are battling against multiple militia groups and a deteriorating security situation in their efforts to respond to an Ebola outbreak that has killed 55 people in the region.

    The outbreak of the deadly virus began shortly after the country’s government in June declared an end to another outbreak – in the west of the country – and lauded those involved for managing to swiftly contain the spread of the disease.

    But access to Congo’s eastern “red zone” is more difficult due to the region’s ongoing conflict.

    There is also the added problem of the movement of internally displaced people in North Kivu province, and their possible cross-border travel into Uganda or Rwanda.

    The World Health Organisation has warned that some areas are inaccessible because of the more than 100 armed groups that are mainly fighting over access to mineral resources.

    The government has rolled out a vaccination campaign that has so far managed to treat more than 1,200 people.

    However, the number of cases has almost doubled in a week, with the Ministry of Health saying late Monday that 96 people were suspected or confirmed to have contracted the disease.

    “In red zones that are more difficult to access … we are working with the local registered nurses who are tracking these people and sending reports by phone every day,” Jessica Ilunga, spokesperson at the Ministry of Health, told dpa on Tuesday.

    Health Minister Oly Ilunga Kalenga said during a visit to the region Monday that medical teams were being provided with security and patients were being treated in safe spaces.

    “The response to the Ebola outbreak is not easy because the disease has been declared in a red zone,” he said.

    “Health personnel and materials are accompanied by an escort when travelling.”

    To try and contain the virus authorities are manning the entrances to the town of Goma, border posts and the busy port, and are taking the temperatures of those arriving from elsewhere in North Kivu.

    Basins and soap have been placed at all these points as well as at churches so that people can wash their hands.

    The government has also relaxed rules about motorcycle commuters wearing helmets in order to avoid the spread of infection.

    Motorcycle-taxis are a popular form of transport in Congo, and motorcycle-taxi driver Hakim Balole told dpa he thought it was a good idea for passengers not to share helmets.

    “The disease can easily be transmitted by sweat,” he said.

    Ebola, which can also spread through blood, vomit and other bodily fluids, is a highly infectious disease that causes a fever and often leads to massive internal bleeding and death.

    dpa/NAN

  • Latest Ebola outbreak is Zaire strain, vaccinations to start: WHO

    The Ebola outbreak in Congo is confirmed to be the Zaire strain of the virus
    and vaccinations of health workers may start as early as Wednesday, a senior official of the World Health
    Organization (WHO) said.

    Peter Salama, WHO deputy director for emergency preparedness and response, gave the results of genetic
    sequencing in a tweet saying that analysis showed it was a new outbreak in North Kivu province.

    “We can start using rVSV-ZEBOV vaccine as early as tomorrow.”

    The experimental vaccine, which is manufactured by Merck, proved successful during its first wide-scale
    usage against an outbreak of Zaire virus on the other side of Congo in the northwest that was
    declared over less than two weeks ago after killing 33.

    The experimental vaccine, which is manufactured by Merck, proved successful during its first wide-scale
    usage against the outbreak in the northwest.

    More than 3,000 doses remain in stock in the capital Kinshasa, allowing authorities to quickly deploy
    it to the affected areas near the Ugandan border.

    The vaccine normally needs to be kept at 80 degrees Celsius below freezing (minus 112 Fahrenheit),
    although it can be stored for a couple of weeks at just above freezing.

  • Ebola cases in DR Congo will rise in coming days – WHO

    Ebola cases in DR Congo will rise in coming days – WHO

    The World Health Organisation (WHO) has raised the alarm that cases from the resurgent Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) are expected to rise in the coming days.

    WHO’s Deputy Director General of Emergency Preparedness and Response, Dr Peter Salama, said in Geneva that there had been around 20 deaths as a result of the Ebola virus.

    Salama also said protecting vulnerable people in eastern DRC from the latest Ebola Virus outbreak was going to be “very, very complex”, given the huge logistical challenges and ongoing conflict there.

    The WHO emergency preparedness and response chief said: “We know for example that there have been around 20 deaths. We can’t at this stage confirm whether they are all confirmed or probable Ebola cases.

    “We expect however that the overall case count will rise in coming days to weeks, based on the trajectory of epidemics at this stage in their development.”

    Salama said that WHO was unaware of the public health emergency in North Kivu province when the UN agency a week ago declared the last Ebola episode over.

    The outbreak on the western side of the country in June, infected dozens, and led to 33 deaths, but in spite of several cases appearing in a major city on the Congo River, it was fully contained after a massive international and national response.

    The top WHO official said that there was “no evidence” to suggest a link between the two outbreaks, although it appeared “very likely” that they shared the same deadly Zaire strain.

    “The death toll from the current Kivu episode is likely to rise,” the WHO official said, adding that the alert was raised on July 25 after a woman and many members of her immediate family died after exhibiting symptoms consistent with Ebola.

    “That event appears to have been a woman who was admitted to hospital around Beni, and on discharge had recovered from the original complaint.

    “After leaving however, she came down with a fever and other symptoms that were clinically consistent with Ebola, and later on, seven of her direct relatives also contracted the disease,” he added.

    Salama explained how longstanding conflict in Eastern DRC – involving more than 100 armed groups in the Kivu area and elsewhere – created an additional level of difficulty in trying to contain the deadly disease.

    In the first week of February 2018 alone around Beni, attacks displaced more than 2,200, in addition to 1,500 displaced at the end of January.

    In the Djugu Territory to the south of North Kivu, inter-ethnic violence led nearly 30,000 to flee their homes to the provincial capital Bunia, at the beginning of 2018.

    “It’s going to be a very, very complex operation,” he said, noting that the vast country is home to the UN’s largest peacekeeping operation, the UN Stabilisation Mission in the DRC.

    One million of the province’s eight million inhabitants are displaced and getting access to some of those in danger of coming into contact with Ebola, will require an armed escort in some cases, the WHO official explained.

    There is also the additional threat that those fleeing violence may also head into nearby Uganda, Tanzania and Burundi, taking the infection with them, Salama said, noting that additional surveillance measures are being implemented at crossing points.

    “On the scale of difficulty, trying to extinguish a deadly outbreak pathogen in a war zone is at the top of the scale,” he added.

    In the most recent Ebola outbreak, a key part of the emergency response involved tracing anyone who had come into contact with suspected carriers of the disease, he said.

    WHO staff could travel hundreds of miles on a motorbike to do this vital work, but this is likely to be much more difficult in view of the high level of insecurity in the Kivus.

    One immediate priority is to confirm whether the latest outbreak involves the Zaire strain, since this can be treated with the same vaccine that was employed in Equateur province.

    “It’s good news and it’s very bad news. The bad news is that this strain of Ebola carries with it the highest case-fatality-rate of any of the strains of Ebola, anywhere above 50 per cent and higher, according to previous outbreaks.

    “So, it’s the most-deadly variant of the Ebola virus strains that we have, that’s the bad news. The good news is that we do have – although it’s still an investigational product – a safe and effective vaccine, that we were able to deploy last time around,” Salama said.

    NAN

     

  • Congo declares four new Ebola outbreaks in eastern province

    Officials from the Health Ministry said four people have tested positive for Ebola in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo just days after another outbreak that killed 33 people in the northwest of the huge country was declared over.

    Twenty people have died from hemorrhagic fevers in a densely populated area near the town of Beni close to the Ugandan border, the ministry said in its statement, without saying when these occurred.

    The ministry said there was no evidence linking this outbreak with the last one, which began in April and occurred over 2,500 km (1,553 miles) away.

    A team of 12 experts from the health ministry will arrive in the zone on Thursday to set up a mobile lab, the ministry said.

    This is the central African country’s 10th outbreak of Ebola since 1976, when the virus was discovered near the eponymous river in the north.

    Congolese and international health officials deployed an experimental vaccine during the last outbreak, which helped contain its spread after it reached a large river port city..

    Ebola, believed to be spread over long distances by bats, causes hemorrhagic fever, vomiting and diarrhea and is spread through direct contact with body fluids.

    It often spreads to humans via infected bush meat.

     

     

  • Ebola scare: Anxiety as FAAN detects 95% of travelers with high fever in Abuja

    The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria says it has detected and picked up more than 95 per cent of travellers who had high fever suspected to be symptoms of the dreaded Ebola virus.

    The travellers were detected at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja.

    According to the airport regulatory body, other relevant agencies have been teamed up with, with a view to effectively guarding against the disease.

    Dr Adamu Adamu, FAAN’s Head of Medical, revealed these during a media tour of the Abuja airport.

    Hundreds of passengers and crew members on-board Emirates Airlines, including the Minister of State for Aviation, Senator Hadi Sirika, were screened with the thermal camera and hand temperature detector during the tour.

    “In this airport, we have a public health emergency contingency plan that we developed in conjunction with the Port Health Services of the Ministry of Health and our partners, Pro-Health International. I am sure you are all aware of the outbreak of Ebola in Congo, which has moved from the rural areas, where it started, towards Kinshasa,” Adamu said.

    “Because Kinshasa is a hub, it has become a serious concern and the world is probably in trouble. Right now, the World Health Organisation has not declared public health emergency of international concern over the case, but Nigeria has to be proactive because of our previous experience.”

    He also said, “What we are doing is not an Ebola scan; we are scanning for high temperature fever so that when we discover any passenger with high temperature, we quickly take that person for proper checks. We don’t want to scare people, because there is no cause for alarm. We want people to come to us if they feel sick or if they suspect any one to be sick.

    “We are looking at the temperature scan. We are also looking at the travel history of passengers. We have sanitisers that have been positioned in strategic areas so that passengers who are coming into Nigeria will have facilities to clean up their hands. I can assure you that over 95 per cent of people that come to this airport with high fever are detected and picked up.”