Containing the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) requires community cooperation and is \u201ceverybody\u2019s business\u201d, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has said.<\/p>\n
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the organisation\u2019s director general, made the plea on Sunday during a visit to eastern Congo where some residents have protested against stringent medical protocols for handling victims\u2019 bodies.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can stop this Ebola and anyone who has it can also recover. But the rule . . . is this thing is everybody\u2019s business and every citizen should be involved,\u201d Ghebreyesus said at the opening of a treatment centre in Bunia, the capital of Ituri province, which is at the centre of the outbreak.<\/p>\n
Protesters have complained restrictions on handling victims\u2019 bodies violate local burial rites, a sentiment that has been linked to at least three attacks against health centres.<\/p>\n
There is no vaccine for the Bundibugyo virus, the strain behind the current outbreak, but infected people can recover, according to Ghebreyesus. <\/p>\n
He said: \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<\/p>\n
Five patients have recovered and four were to be discharged on Sunday, after the earlier discharge of the other patient, the WHO chief said. The organisation has recorded 906 suspected cases and 223 suspected deaths in the DRC. Authorities in neighbouring Uganda have confirmed nine cases and one death.<\/p>\n
Fighting between rival armed groups in the mineral-rich Ituri region has complicated relief efforts, prompting Ghebreyesus to call for a ceasefire, saying: \u201cNo cause, no conflict, no grievance is worth condemning innocent people to death from a preventable disease.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brazilian health authorities said they are monitoring two patients for possible Ebola infection in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. A 37-year-old man from DRC \u201cexhibited symptoms such as fever, meeting the definition of a suspected case\u201d of Ebola, the Sao Paulo state government said in a statement on Saturday. The health department in Rio de Janeiro state, meanwhile, reported that it had activated safety protocols after a man from Uganda showed \u201cviral symptoms such as cough, chills and diarrhoea\u201d.<\/p>\n
The outbreak \u2013 which the WHO has declared a public health emergency of international concern \u2013 is the 17th recorded Ebola epidemic in the DRC. The disease was first identified in the central African country in 1976 and has an average death rate, across all outbreaks, of 50 per cent.<\/p>\n
Health officials and aid workers have complained they lack basic supplies such as masks. Medical aid donated by the European Union reached Ituri last week and the US announced $80 million (\u20ac68.6 million) in additional aid, raising its total commitment to $112 million.<\/p>\n
The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said national incident systems must be activated rapidly and that investments in pandemic preparedness must become permanent.<\/p>\n
Jean Kaseya, the organisation\u2019s director general, said in the Financial Times on Sunday that international support was vital and most effective when it aligned with the strategies of African institutions and African governments. \u201cAfrica\u2019s response to Ebola must be defined by Africa itself,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
The medical charity M\u00e9decins Sans Fronti\u00e8res (MSF) warned on Saturday that the disease\u2019s spread was deeply alarming and that never before had so many cases been recorded so soon.<\/p>\n
MSF teams were \u201cwitnessing a response that has not yet caught up to the rapid spread of the epidemic\u201d, said the organisation\u2019s deputy director, Alan Gonzalez. \u201cThe reality today is that nobody knows the true scale and severity of this outbreak. New suspected cases are being reported daily, yet hundreds of samples remain untested.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Containing the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) requires community cooperation and is \u201ceverybody\u2019s business\u201d,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":476568,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[8044,196728,103,61,60],"class_list":["post-476567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-democratic-republic-of-congo","tag-ebola-disease","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476567","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=476567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/476568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}