Supervisor Elham AbolFateh
Editor in Chief Mohamed Wadie

Ebola Spreads in Congo


Mon 15 Apr 2019 | 01:38 PM
Ahmed Yasser

An outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that has killed more than 700 people and is continuing to spread, but does not constitute an international emergency, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Friday.

In a statement, a committee from WHO explained that the deadly disease is concentrated in two Congo provinces and cases are rising in remaining epicentres, notably Butembo, Katwa, Vuhovi and Mandima. At least 1,206 people have contracted the disease and 764 of them have died.

congo-Ebola

During a Geneva news conference Dr. Robert Steffen chair of the WHO Emergency, reported that the organisation has opted not to designate an eight-month-old outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The "WHO" was criticized for not declaring the 2014 Ebola outbreak an international emergency until nearly 1,000 people had died and the disease had spilled across borders.

Red Cross explained that Ebola is now spreading faster and many people are no longer seeking care. It is clear that some vulnerable communities do not trust Ebola responders.

  Ebola killed more than 700 people

Also, health workers also face distrust in some communities, whose members are reluctant to take part in decontamination activities.

The pace of new cases is accelerating and the outbreak is already the world’s worst since the disease left more than 11,000 people dead when it swept across three West African countries in 2014.

Experts have declared four emergencies in the past decade: the H1N1 virus that caused an influenza pandemic 2009, a major Ebola outbreak in West Africa 2014, polio 2014 and Zika virus 2016.