Health experts have long feared the virus it could make its way to the city, which is on the Rwandan border
The Ebola virus has reached the Congolese city of Goma, home to two million people, for the first time since the epidemic began nearly a year ago.
The Congolese health ministry said a man who had arrived in the regional centre on Sunday had been quickly transported to an Ebola treatment centre.
Continue reading...Deadly measles outbreak claims almost 2,000 lives, compounding strain on health system already reeling from Ebola
Health workers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have launched an urgent measles vaccination campaign in Ebola-hit regions, after almost 2,000 deaths from the preventable disease, two-thirds of them among children under five.
At least 1,981 people died from measles in DRC this year, surpassing the 1,641 deaths from Ebola, according to the UN children’s agency, Unicef. The “unprecedented” humanitarian crisis is putting the health system under strain, UN staff said.
Continue reading...Deadly outbreak is ‘global wake-up call’, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus tells Guardian
The head of the World Health Organization has called the world’s second worst Ebola outbreak a “global wake-up call” to the escalating risk of disease outbreaks spreading from conflict areas neglected by the international community.
Only when there was “fear and panic” in the headlines did the international community put money into responding, said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. The real issue was a lack of day-to-day funding for preparedness to combat serious epidemics before they become regional or international threats, he said.
Continue reading...On two-day visit, DfID minister says outbreak is heartbreaking and very dangerous
The year-long Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is on the edge of spiralling out of control and the World Health Organization should declare it an international emergency, Rory Stewart, the UK’s international development secretary, has said.
Stewart is on a two-day visit to the DRC visiting emergency health centres and victims of the disease to assess the issues hampering efforts to bring the epidemic under permanent control. So far in the outbreak 2,400 people have contracted the disease and 1,606 have died, according to the WHO.
Continue reading...Regional hearing seen as ‘last resort’ in battle to overturn measure that, exacerbated by Ebola, has affected thousands
Sierra Leone is being taken to court over its ban on pregnant girls attending school, which has denied thousands the right to finish their education.
Many girls were orphaned in the west African country’s deadly Ebola outbreak and, as they were left vulnerable and forced to fend for themselves, there was a spike in pregnancies. When schools reopened after the outbreak was contained, the government banned them from attending, to protect “innocent girls” from a bad influence.
Continue reading...Political, security and cultural complications – not least a refusal to believe that Ebola exists – have thwarted efforts to overcome DRC’s deadly outbreak
Moise Kitsakihu-Mbira has lost his brother, his grandson and 11 other family members to Ebola. When he himself fell sick he sought treatment in secret. His family don’t believe the virus exists and think a man in their village poisoned them.
Refusal to believe in the existence of Ebola is one difficulty for doctors who say the current outbreak of the deadly virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the “most complex public health emergency in history” and warn it could drag on for months.
Continue reading...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...Academics invited to the UK are refused entry on arbitrary and ‘insulting’ grounds
The Home Office is being accused of institutional racism and damaging British research projects through increasingly arbitrary and “insulting” visa refusals for academics.
In April, a team of six Ebola researchers from Sierra Leone were unable to attend vital training in the UK, funded by the Wellcome Trust as part of a £1.5m flagship pandemic preparedness programme. At the LSE Africa summit, also in April, 24 out of 25 researchers were missing from a single workshop. Shortly afterwards, the Save the Children centenary events were marred by multiple visa refusals of key guests.
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...The star of ER and The Good Wife is back – as a doctor fighting to save humanity. She gives her bodyguard the slip to talk about our imperilled planet – and her love of Sussex A-roads
Before I meet Julianna Margulies, I spend three days staring at her bodyguard. He’s impossible to miss: one of those men whose every attempt to blend in flounders. Margulies and I are in Lille, judges at the Series Mania television festival, although our experiences differ a little. My cloak of anonymity allows me to roam the city unpestered. Margulies, however, has been a TV mainstay for 25 years, with roles in two juggernaut shows, ER and The Good Wife. Everybody knows who she is, hence Muscles.
He’s even there at the start of our interview, looming in the doorway of our room at the Chamber of Commerce. As I ease past and close the door, I ask if it isn’t a pain being constantly tailed. She smiles and says: “Three years ago, I was the guest of honour when they held this festival in Paris. When I get there, they say, ‘We have detail for you.’ I say, ‘Guys, I don’t need a bodyguard.’ But they won’t budge. We get to the hotel and I say to my bodyguard, ‘My husband and I are going out to lunch. You go home, please.’ So we left the hotel and I’ve never seen anything like it. People were everywhere. We backed into the hotel and my husband called the bodyguard and said, ‘We made a mistake!’ He said, ‘I know – I’m just around the corner.’”
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...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...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...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...