Ebola in DRC contained

FEARS: DEADLY DISEASE MIGHT SPREAD

UN agency, Doctors Without Frontiers using new vaccine.

United Nations (UN) health experts have reported that the outbreak of ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been largely contained after the outbreak of the disease nearly two months ago.

A total of 55 cases of ebola have been recorded during the current outbreak of the often-deadly viral infection and 28 people have died, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Ebola is endemic in DRC and has been identified there nine times since 1976.

Before the current outbreak in Equateur Province, the most recent episode of the disease was in 2017, in northern Likati province. Four people died and four survived, according to WHO.

Ahead of the WHO announcement, there were fears that the disease might continue its spread from rural north-western DRC, along the key Congo River transport route, to the capital Kinshasa, which is home to 10 million people, and also spread to neighbouring countries.

Those concerns were based on the grim toll and progress of the ebola epidemic in West Africa between 2013 and 2016, which killed more than 11 000 people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

To counter the threat from the current outbreak – and making use of a new vaccine – the UN agency and Doctors Without Frontiers quickly coordinated over an inoculation programme that began in the DRC city of Mbandaka, where around one million people live.

This was followed by another round of preventive vaccination in and around the town of Bikoro to the south, where the initial ebola victims were identified. –ANA