New Ebola outbreak in DRC
AT LEAST THREE DEAD, BUT AUTHORITIES SAY SITUATION ‘UNDER CONTROL’
>> NAIROBI: An Ebola outbreak has been declared in northern Democratic Republic of Congo and has killed at least three people in the past three weeks, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday.
The affected zone is in a forested area of Lower Uele province, and it is close to the border with the Central African Republic, the WHO said.
The outbreak is not linked to previous Ebola flare-ups in the country, nor the one that tore through West Africa in 2014, killing more than 11,000 people, said Tarik Jasarevic, a WHO spokesman. That outbreak was significant because it reached major cities and began in a part of Africa that had never seen Ebola before.
Mr Jasarevic said that there had been a number of Ebola outbreaks in the Lower Uele region since 2000. The Democratic Republic of Congo has had eight outbreaks of Ebola since 1976, according to the WHO.
The virus circulates in bats and sometimes causes outbreaks i n primates. Scientists believe that humans usually contract it directly from bat guano, from eating bats or from eating primates that have died of Ebola.
Ebola can persist for months in certain body tissues that are relatively protected from the immune system, including the eyes and the testes, and little is known about the long-term effects of the virus.
Of the five blood samples taken from the newest suspected cases and analysed by the Congolese National Institute of Biomedical Research, one tested positive for Ebola, according to the health ministry. Since April 22, the ministry has recorded nine suspected cases and three deaths.
Dr Armand Sprecher, a public health specialist and Ebola expert who works with Doctors Without Borders — widely known by its French name, Medecins Sans Frontieres — said by telephone from Brussels that unless a full investigation were conducted, it would be hard to know how severe the new outbreak could be.
“It’s too early to say,” Dr Sprecher said. “It could just be that one case, which is unlikely, or that there are more cases, but that have not been reported.”
On the spread of Ebola to humans who have touched or eaten infected animals, he said: “Ebola exists on its own in the bush and it then comes over and here you go.”
The local authorities said they had the situation under control. “We have not placed this zone in quarantine because we will handle this and we are experienced in this,” Dr Jean-Jacques Muyembe, director of the National Institute of Biomedical Research, told a news conference in Kinshasa, the capital.
“The WHO will contribute as always in the fight against this outbreak,” he said, adding that a delegation of health officials was expected to join local officials in the affected area.
Thomas Geisbert, a microbiologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston and one of the inventors of the Ebola vaccine, said using the treatment “certainly looks like it would be effective” in the Democratic Republic of Congo because the vaccine is based on the Ebola strain that has circulated in the country — the former Zaire.
But widespread vaccination may be unnecessary, he said. Right now, the outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo is “very typical historically”, in that it appears limited to a few dozen cases.
Normally, Mr Geisbert said, the WHO, Doctors Without Borders or other agencies “would come in and quarantine the cases, and they would be handled without things getting out of control”.
Allarangar Yokouide, the WHO representative in the country, said, “The first teams of epidemiologists, biologists, experts in social mobilisation, crisis management and community engagement, as well as experts in water, hygiene and sanitation, should reach the affected zone today or tomorrow” via the city of Kisangani.