Twelfth Ebola death confirmed in Congo
KINSHASA, CONGO — Another person has died in Congo of a confirmed case of Ebola, bringing the number of fatalities to 12, said the Health Ministry.
The new death happened in Iboko, a rural area in northwestern Equateur province, said the Health Ministry statement released Sunday. There are also four new suspected cases in the province, said the statement.
Congo now has 35 confirmed Ebola cases.
Health workers have identified people who have been in contact with confirmed Ebola cases in three areas in Equateur province, the rural areas of Bikoro and Iboko and Mdbandaka, the provincial capital of 1.2 million.
Congo’s health minister Saturday flew to Bikoro and Iboko to see the deployment of health workers who will be tracing those who have been in contact with Ebola cases and inoculating them with a new experimental vaccine. Health minister Oly Ilunga was accompanied by representatives of the World Health Organization and UNICEF. The vaccination campaign in those rural areas is to begin Monday.
The campaign is already underway in Mbandaka, where four Ebola cases have been confirmed. About 100 health workers have been vaccinated there as frontline workers face high risk from the virus, which is spread via contact with the bodily fluids of those infected.
The next few weeks are crucial in determining whether the outbreak can be brought under control, according to WHO. Complicating factors include its spread to a major city, the fact that health workers have been infected and the existence of three or four “separate epicentres” that make monitoring contacts of infected people more difficult.
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a meeting in Geneva on Saturday that “I am personally committed to ensuring that we do everything we can to stop this outbreak as soon as possible.”
WHO is using a “ring vaccination” approach, targeting the contacts of people infected or suspected of infection and then the contacts of those people.
More than 600 contacts have been identified.