WHO scrambles to halt spread of Ebola
KINSHASA: The Democratic Republic of Congo and UN agencies began deploying emergency teams of specialists at the weekend to try to prevent the spread of an Ebola epidemic suspected to have infected more than 30 people, they said yesterday.
The World Health Organisation obtained 4000 doses of an experimental Ebola vaccine and was preparing for deployment in Congo, its Africa director, Matshidiso Moeti, told Reuters by telephone.
Only two cases have so far been confirmed in a laboratory.
The latest suspected case was reported on Friday in the northwestern province of Equateur, which Health Minister Oly Ilunga Kalenga visited on Saturday with officials from the WHO and UN Children’s Fund (Unicef).
President Joseph Kabila also met WHO DirectorGeneral Ted ros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in Kinshasa on Sunday.
Moeti said 362 contacts had been traced of those who had fallen sick — a necessary precur sor to deploying the vaccines. She said two of those contacts had got to the provincial capital, Mbandaka. The biggest worry since the epidemic was ident ified has been that it could spread there.
‘‘We’re concerned because this is a city of 1 million people,’’ she said.
Congo first reported the outbreak, centred on the village of Ikoko Impenge, near the town of Bikoro, on Tuesday, with 32 suspected, probable or confirmed cases of the disease, including 18 deaths since April 4. Some deaths occurring as early as January have not yet been linked to the epidemic.
Officials are racing to prevent the virus from spreading out of control, as happened in West Africa from 2014 to 2016, when Ebola killed more than 11,300 people in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.
The WHO was criticised for bungling its response to that epidemic, and so has moved quickly. — Reuters