{"id":476118,"date":"2026-05-31T13:00:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T13:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/476118\/"},"modified":"2026-05-31T13:00:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T13:00:08","slug":"who-chief-hails-five-ebola-recoveries-as-new-treatment-centre-opens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/476118\/","title":{"rendered":"WHO chief hails five Ebola recoveries as new treatment centre opens"},"content":{"rendered":"

Five patients have recovered from a rare type of Ebola, the head of the World Health Organisation said on Sunday during a visit to a city at the heart of an outbreak in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.<\/p>\n

\u201cFour people will be discharged today and there was one that was discharged the day before yesterday,\u201d WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during the opening of a new Ebola treatment centre in Bunia, the provincial capital of Ituri.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, we\u2019re still working on vaccines and treatments but that doesn\u2019t mean that people cannot recover from Ebola,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

We can stop this Ebola and anyone who has it can also recover<\/p>\n

The WHO said on Friday a patient had recovered from the Bundibugyo virus, the current kind of Ebola, which has no approved treatment or vaccine. It was the first documented recovery of a confirmed Bundibugyo patient during the current outbreak.<\/p>\n

The health organisation said latest official figures showed 906 suspected cases and 223 suspected deaths. Neighbouring Uganda has confirmed nine cases and one death, the Ugandan Health Ministry said on Friday.<\/p>\n

The virus continues to spread faster than the response despite better-organised health facilities and new aid arrivals, Doctors Without Borders, or MSF, said on Saturday, calling for the immediate expansion of testing, faster deployment of aid workers and sustained access for medical supplies.<\/p>\n

The dangers faced by health workers have been heightened by anger among residents over the stringent medical protocols for handling the victims\u2019 bodies, which clash with local burial rites. Residents have launched at least three attacks against health centres.<\/p>\n

Dr Tedros stressed the importance of involving the community in the outbreak response during the opening of the treatment centre on Sunday.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you come to health facilities when you have symptoms, you can get the support and recover, so the key is to come forward as early as possible and to get the necessary support,\u201d the WHO chief said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can stop this Ebola and anyone who has it can also recover. But the rule \u2026 is this thing is everybody\u2019s business and every citizen should be involved,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus visiting the Evangelical Medical Centre in Bunia (Moses Sawasawa\/AP)<\/p>\n

Attacks in Ituri by the Allied Democratic Forces, a rebel group allied with the so-called Islamic State group, and a coalition of ethnic militias have also hindered the response.<\/p>\n

The illness also has been reported in the provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu, south of Ituri, where the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group controls many key cities, including Goma and Bukavu. The rebels have reported two cases.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe final message we would like to share with the Ituri community is that there is hope,\u201d Pierre Akilimali, incident manager at DR Congo\u2019s National Institute of Public Health, said during the inauguration on Sunday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the symptomatic treatment that we are currently providing, we are seeing patients recover,\u201d Mr Akilimali added.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe truly have hope. The virus here is not as complicated as those we have dealt with in the past, and with the support of all our partners, we believe we will be able to bring this outbreak under control as quickly as possible,\u201d said Davin Ambitapio, another doctor at the treatment centre.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Five patients have recovered from a rare type of Ebola, the head of the World Health Organisation said…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":476119,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[103,61,1042,60,1094,386],"class_list":["post-476118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-international","tag-ireland","tag-report","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476118\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/476119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}