Posted on 09/06/2018 11:26:56 AM PDT by yesthatjallen
An outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in two eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo has spread to a major international trading hub with almost a million residents, Congolese health officials said Wednesday.
Health officials in Butembo, a city with close links to neighboring Uganda, said they had confirmed that a man who died at Butembo University Hospital had tested positive for the virus.
The Congolese health ministry said the man had contact with an Ebola patient in Beni, a city about 25 miles north of Butembo where almost two dozen Ebola victims have been identified, before fleeing south.
The health ministry said it had prepared the hospital staff to deal with potential Ebola cases. Ndjoloko Tambwe Bathe, who is heading the response for the DRC’s health ministry, traveled to the city on Wednesday to set up a full response team. The ministry is setting up an Ebola treatment unit, the fifth established in the region since the outbreak began.
The most recent outbreak of the Ebola virus began in July in North Kivu Province, home to about eight million residents and about a million internally displaced refugees. So far, health officials have identified 127 probable and confirmed cases. Eighty-seven people have died.
Most of those cases have been in the Mabalako health district, where the first cases were reported in late July after a funeral for a woman in the town of Mangina. Several relatives who attended the funeral, who probably washed and dressed the woman’s body to prepare her for the afterlife, later came down with symptoms.
Several probable and confirmed cases have been identified in neighboring Ituri Province, north of North Kivu.
Public health officials had already been worried about the spread of the virus once it reached Beni, a city of about a quarter million residents that also has close trade ties to Uganda. Now that it has reached Butembo, those officials said, their fears have grown.
“Good news is case detected quickly, response already in place & expanding,” Peter Salama, the World Health Organization’s deputy director-general for Emergency Preparedness and Response, wrote on Twitter. “Bad new[s] is increases risk of further spread, and having Ebola in an urban centre makes ending the outbreak much harder.”
In the weeks after the outbreak began, global public health officials and non-governmental organizations have raced hundreds of epidemiologists and technicians and millions of dollars in relief aid to the region. Those officials had identified at least 4,300 people who had come into contact with someone infected with the Ebola virus, and more than half of those people remain under watch in case they develop symptoms.
Public health officials also worried that the security situation in North Kivu Province would hinder their ability to track down those who had come into contact with Ebola patients. Ethnic violence, and attacks from Islamist guerrillas based in Uganda, made some of that critical contact-tracing far more difficult.
In an interview last week from Beni, WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said contact tracers were largely confident that they had identified virtually all of those who could potentially become infected.
“The feeling is that we have, in Mangina, the resources. It seems the cases that are coming are coming from the contacts, which is a good sign,” Jasarevic said. He said the WHO teams had been able to access all the villages where Ebola cases might be present.
The Congolese Health Ministry said a vaccination campaign that has been underway for weeks had already reached 6,343 people, including more than 3,000 in Mabalako, almost 2,000 in Beni and more than a thousand in Mandima. Front-line health care workers and those who might come into contact with an Ebola victim get the highest priority for the new vaccine.
This is the second Ebola outbreak this year in which the new vaccine has been deployed. The vaccine, developed during the waning days of an Ebola outbreak in the West African nations of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, was earlier deployed to Equateur Province, a region about 750 miles west of North Kivu.
None of those who received the vaccine in Equateur subsequently fell ill.
Since the Ebola virus was first discovered in 1976, there have been 14 confirmed outbreaks, mostly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo — or, as it was then known, Zaire. The outbreak in West Africa killed more than 11,300 people, by far the deadliest of any epidemic. The latest outbreak is already the ninth-deadliest of its kind.
Bring out yer dead ping.
"An outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in two eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
has spread to a major international trading hub with almost a million residents, Congolese health officials said Wednesday.
So far, health officials have identified 127 probable and confirmed cases. Eighty-seven people have died.
..officials had identified at least 4,300 people who had come into contact with someone infected with the Ebola virus,
and more than half of those people remain under watch in case they develop symptoms.
Ethnic violence, and attacks from Islamist guerrillas based in Uganda, made some of that critical contact-tracing far more difficult.
This is the second Ebola outbreak this year in which the new vaccine has been deployed.
The vaccine, developed during the waning days of an Ebola outbreak in the West African nations of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea,
was earlier deployed to Equateur Province, a region about 750 miles west of North Kivu.
None of those who received the vaccine in Equateur subsequently fell ill."
( FReeper note - less than 2 weeks ago, the death toll was 67, so the virus has doubled the fatalities within that time.
The good news is that the experimental vaccine appears to be working )
They have a city named Mangina?
A couple years ago I read a travel article by a guy who wanted to visit all the African countries. What he found were horrors and lack of basic infrastructure in every country, and he stayed in the large cities and capitals. The guy had started his trip with dreamy eyes but by the end of his journey, he had nothing but contempt for the whole continent.
Well, it’s pretty ruthless, but he does have a point.
I read a book once about this topic, and there was a strain of Ebola called Ebola Reston.
It was a good news/bad news thing.
The bad news - communicated to others via aerosol and infection rate was 100 percent.
The good news - only infected monkeys.
It’s our problem because if you get a strain that can be transmitted airborne and has a high infection rate, then it would ruin at least a week. It would spread very quickly and the death rate would be high. It’s also a painful way to go.
True. And he lived it.
I’ve a friend who emigrated from SA about 16-17 years ago. Still goes a few times a year on business. I sent this to him a few months back, and his response was “yes, that’s about it.”
Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.
The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.
So far the false positive rate is 100%.
At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.
*sigh* Such is life, and death...
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