He said US$1.4 billion ($2.7b) was needed in total for the disease and humanitarian response.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to surge our response, and surging our response means financial resources, human resources,\u201d Wessam said. \u201cWe are urging all partners, donors … to fast-track the disbursement of those resources.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ebola spreads through close contact and infected bodily fluids. The current outbreak is caused by Bundibugyo, a rare species that has no approved vaccine or treatment and is believed to have spread for some time before it was detected.<\/p>\n
The WHO\u2019s figures for the DRC, which come from the health authorities in the vast country, show that the outbreak there has a case fatality rate of 34%.<\/p>\n
A total of 285 patients in the DRC have recovered, while 304 suspected cases of the viral haemorrhagic fever are under investigation.<\/p>\n
The outbreak in northeastern DRC has hit four provinces but is focused on Ituri province.<\/p>\n
The trial of two potential treatments for Bundibugyo began in the DRC on July 2, and is evaluating the effectiveness of the monoclonal antibody MBP134 and the antiviral drug remdesivir, alone and in combination.<\/p>\n
\u2018Fragility\u2019 <\/p>\n
The DRC\u2019s 17th Ebola outbreak was declared on May 15 after several deaths in Ituri, a mineral-rich province plagued by armed groups.<\/p>\n
\u201cPopulation movements, persistent insecurity, and the fragility of the health system continue to complicate efforts to bring the outbreak under control,\u201d Anne Ancia, the WHO\u2019s representative in the DRC, said Tuesday.<\/p>\n
She said there were now around 700 beds across 22 treatment centres and 300 more beds in the pipeline, with centres operating at around 90% capacity.<\/p>\n
More than 10,000 contacts of infected people are being monitored, at a follow-up rate of 82%. The WHO believes a rate of 95% is needed to get on top of the outbreak.<\/p>\n
Laboratory capacity has increased from 30 tests per day in the capital Kinshasa to more than 2000 in decentralised labs in the affected provinces.<\/p>\n
One of the affected provinces is South Kivu, which has seen clashes between the Congolese armed forces and the Rwanda-backed M23 armed group.<\/p>\n
UN rights chief Volker Turk on Thursday called for an immediate end to the fighting, deploring its impact on civilians and saying there were growing fears that the increased clashes could force further displacement, including into other countries.<\/p>\n
– AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He said US$1.4 billion ($2.7b) was needed in total for the disease and humanitarian response. \u201cWe need to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":518027,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[70481,10466,806,29893,8425,634,19067,23268,6440,5658,29420,226,134,185,3375,111,139,69,4989,17976,384,32258,23269,3048,5659,42032,8431,377],"class_list":["post-518026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-70481","tag-african","tag-as","tag-authorities","tag-congo","tag-death","tag-democratic","tag-ebola","tag-ever","tag-experts","tag-fastest","tag-growing","tag-health","tag-is","tag-killed","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-organisation","tag-outbreak","tag-people","tag-reaches","tag-republic","tag-said","tag-say","tag-toll","tag-virus","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/518027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}