Panel backs off from declaring international emergency despite spread into Uganda
The World Health Organization has backed off from declaring that an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is an international emergency despite it spreading into Uganda.
After long discussions, a WHO committee ruled that although the outbreak was an emergency for DRC, it did not fit the criteria to be declared a public health emergency of international concern.
Continue reading...Ugandan authorities confirm two other patients also undergoing treatment as officials consider declaring global health emergency
A five year-old-boy who became the first confirmed Ebola case outside the Democratic Republic of the Congo during the current outbreak died in Uganda on Tuesday night.
The child’s three-year-old brother and 50-year-old grandmother are also being treated, according to the Ugandan authorities. They have been isolated at a hospital near the Congo border.
Continue reading...Violence by armed groups and community mistrust hamper attempts to halt epidemic
More than 2,000 people have been infected with Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the health ministry has said, and aid agencies expressed concern over the accelerating spread of the disease.
So far there have been 1914 confirmed and 94 probable cases of infection with the virus, making the outbreak, which was declared in August last year, the second largest in history. New cases are being reported at a rate of around 10 every day. Some 1,346 people have died
Continue reading...Charities call for outbreak to be put on a par with crises in Yemen, Syria and Mozambique as death toll reaches 1,287
The UN has been urged by charities to ramp up Ebola prevention work in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the highest level of emergency response.
Only three crises – Yemen, Syria and Mozambique – are treated as the equivalent of a level-three response, activated when agencies are unable to meet needs on the ground.
Continue reading...Attacks on health clinics provoke concern that disclosing details of funding might ‘put a target on the head’ of medical workers
The UK has agreed not to publicly disclose how much funding has been allocated to the Ebola response in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, following warnings this might put those responding to the outbreak at risk.
Harriett Baldwin, minister of state for Africa, said the Congolese government had asked for these details not to be made public over fears this will put “a target on the head of some of the responders”.
Continue reading...People in Butembo, where outbreak began, express anger over continued spread of virus and lack of community engagement
Christine Masika lives with her mother, sisters and a friend in Butembo, the town at the centre of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Ebola outbreak.
She knew of many people who contracted the virus. Most, she says, are dead.
Continue reading...Key facts about the second largest outbreak of the disease in history
With more than 2,577 confirmed cases and more than 1,803 confirmed deaths, the outbreak in the eastern DRC is the second largest in history. It has a 67% fatality rate and 11 months after it began, the case numbers are still escalating. It is disproportionately affecting women (55% of cases) and children (28%).
Continue reading...More than 1,600 people infected in North Kivu province since outbreak began in August
An Ebola epidemic in a conflict-riven region of Democratic Republic of Congo is out of control and could become as serious as the outbreak that devastated three countries in west Africa between 2013 and 2016, experts and aid chiefs have warned.
New cases over the past month have increased at the fastest rate since the outbreak began last year, as aid agencies struggle to enact a public health response in areas that have suffered decades of neglect and conflict, with incredibly fragile health systems and regular outbreaks of deadly violence involving armed groups.
Continue reading...Top official condemns lack of focus on record 41 million people left homeless in their own countries after fleeing violence
Record numbers of people have been forced from their homes by conflict in a crisis that has received “pitiful” international attention, the head of the Norwegian Refugee Council has said.
A total of 41.3 million people were living in a state of internal displacement by the end of 2018 due to violence, researchers for the organisation found, with increasing numbers unable to return home for protracted periods. This is a rise of more than a million on the previous year.
Continue reading...Women and children fare worst as efforts to contain outbreak are undermined by health centre attacks and local mistrust
The number of people killed by the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is expected to exceed 1,000 on Friday, the World Health Organization has warned.
Weekly infections have been rising since late February, with attacks by armed groups and a failure to win community trust undermining the response to the epidemic.
Continue reading...Pristine forests are vital for climate and wildlife but trend of losses is rising, data shows
Millions of hectares of pristine tropical rainforest were destroyed in 2018, according to satellite analysis, with beef, chocolate and palm oil among the main causes.
The forests store huge amounts of carbon and are teeming with wildlife, making their protection critical to stopping runaway climate change and halting a sixth mass extinction. But deforestation is still on an upward trend, the researchers said. Although 2018 losses were lower than in 2016 and 2017, when dry conditions led to large fires, last year was the next worst since 2002, when such records began.
Continue reading...Attacks on health centres are impeding efforts to contain an epidemic that has claimed nearly 900 lives in nine months
Archippe Kamuha knows the signs of Ebola well: diarrhoea, bleeding, persistent fever. But if the 25-year-old developed such symptoms, she would not contact specialist health workers.
“I know that if I go [to a treatment centre], I’ll die. All my friends who go there don’t come home, they die,” said Kamuha, whose home town, Butembo, in north-eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, is at the centre of the country’s escalating Ebola outbreak.
Continue reading...With the possible exception of quinine, for centuries the only treatment for malaria, and antibiotics, vaccines have saved more lives than any other intervention in medical history. Yet, from New York’s Brooklyn to Camden in north London to Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, vaccines are in retreat, shunned by populations who seemingly have little sense of the risks they are running with their own or other people’s lives.
Why this should be so is one of the conundrums of our age. Is it all the fault of social media and anti-vax propaganda that has taken root on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube? Or has society grown complacent about the risks that infectious diseases posed to previous generations, when it was common for children to be paralysed by polio or rendered deaf or brain-damaged by measles?
Continue reading...Habib Bazaboko, who has lived in the UK since childhood, was due to fly on Friday
A judge has halted the removal of a man who has lived in the UK since childhood just hours before he was due to be deported to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a country with one of the worst human rights records in the world. It is the second time he has been within hours of deportation within a week.
Habib Bazaboko, 39, a stonemason, fled to the UK at the age of 11 after his father was murdered in his home country. He witnessed the murder and was left deeply traumatised.
Continue reading...Faltering national response to epidemic prompts experts to consider official announcement of public health crisis
Experts will convene for an emergency meeting on Friday to determine whether the recent escalation of Ebola cases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo should be declared a global health crisis.
More than eight months into the epidemic, which has killed 751 people, agencies warned the disease is still not under control. The response to the outbreak has been complicated by conflict, political instability, and distrust of Ebola services.
Continue reading...Habib Bazaboko is returned to removal centre instead of boarding a flight at Heathrow in apparent U-turn by Home Office
A man who has lived in the UK since childhood and was due to be deported on Saturday on a 6.55pm flight to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a country with one of the worst human rights records in the world, has been given an eleventh-hour stay of execution.
Habib Bazaboko, a stonemason, fled to the UK at the age of 11 after his father was murdered in his home country. He has previous convictions, including for grievous bodily harm, but has not committed any crime for nine years.
Continue reading...Charity Commission to assess whether money sent abroad was subject to due diligence as German MPs urge funding halt
Britain’s charity regulator has launched a formal investigation into the World Wide Fund for Nature, following allegations the conservation group is implicated in human rights abuses against people in Africa and Asia.
The inquiry by the Charity Commission will assess whether WWF’s UK arm followed “due diligence” in ensuring that money sent abroad did not contribute to abuse.
Continue reading...Internal emails show Home Office asking colleagues to confirm they are not aware of persecutions
Home Office officials have been trying to persuade their Foreign Office colleagues to say publicly that it is safe to return people to the Democratic Republic of Congo despite the country having one of the worst human rights records in the world.
Internal emails obtained by the human rights organisation Justice First, and seen by the Guardian, show Home Office officials requesting that their British embassy colleagues in the DRC capital, Kinshasa, issue a statement saying they have no information that people are being persecuted after returning from the UK to the DRC.
Continue reading...Park in DRC was shut last year for more than eight months after series of attacks on staff
A forest ranger has been killed in Virunga national park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, weeks after the reserve was reopened to tourists.
Virunga, home to critically endangered mountain gorillas as well as hundreds of other rare species, was shut for more than eight months for a review of security after a series of attacks on staff last year.
Continue reading...Health agencies re-evaluate approach after attacks on treatment centres in North Kivu
A second clinic serving patients affected by the escalating Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been set alight, as concerns mount over widespread distrust of health agencies.
Seven months since the start of the outbreak, which has claimed 548 lives, experts warned that the virus is still not under control and said suspicion of agencies is severely undermining Ebola services.
Continue reading...