EBOLA New outbreak of Ebola kills 17 in northwest DR Congo

JF&P

Deceased
AFP•May 8, 2018

Kinshasa (AFP) - Seventeen people in northwest Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have died from Ebola, the health ministry said on Tuesday, describing the fresh outbreak as a "public health emergency with international impact."

"Twenty-one cases of fever with haemorrhagic indications and 17 deaths" have been recorded in Equateur province, it said, citing a notification to the ministry as of May 3.

It is the DRC's ninth known outbreak of Ebola since 1976, when the deady viral disease was first identified in then-Zaire by a Belgian-led team.

In Geneva, the World Health Organization (WHO) said lab tests in the DRC confirmed the presence of Ebola virus in two out of five samples collected from patients.

"WHO is working closely with the government of the DRC to rapidly scale up its operations and mobilize health partners, using the model of a successful response to a similar... outbreak in 2017," it said in a statement.

It said it had released $1 million (840,000 euros) from an emergency contingency fund, set up a coordination group and deployed more than 50 experts to work with the DRC government and health agencies.

The outbreak occurred in Bikoro, on the shores of Lake Tumba.

All the cases were reported from a clinic at Ilkoko Iponge, located about 30 kilometres (20 miles) from Bikoro, where treatment capacities are limited, the WHO said.

A team of experts from the WHO, Doctors without Borders (DRC) and Equateur province travelled to Bikoro on Tuesday to beef up coordination and carry out investigations, it said.

Ebola is one of the world's most notorious diseases, being both highly infectious and extremely lethal.

It is caused by a virus that has a natural reservoir in the bat, which does not itself fall ill, but can pass the microbe on to humans who hunt it for "bushmeat".

The virus is handed on by contact with bodily fluids -- touching a sick or dead person is a well-known source of infection.

Following an incubation period of between two and 21 days, Ebola develops into a high fever, weakness, intense muscle and joint pain, headaches and a sore throat.

That is often followed by vomiting and diarrhoea, skin eruptions, kidney and liver failure, and internal and external bleeding.

The worst-ever Ebola outbreak started in December 2013 in southern Guinea before spreading to two neighbouring west African countries, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

That outbreak killed more than 11,300 people out of nearly 29,000 registered cases, according to WHO estimates, although the real figure is thought to be significantly higher.

More than 99 percent of victims were in the three West African countries, although cases occurred in other parts of the world, often stirring panic.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/outbreak-ebola-kills-17-northwest-dr-congo-170946645.html
 

Hfcomms

EN66iq
Here we go again...hope not. Dodged a bullet last time but I never liked the idea of playing Russian Roulette.
 

FarmerJohn

Has No Life - Lives on TB
Unbelievably, this came in the exact week when the Trump White House announced Rear Adm. Tim Ziemer was leaving his post as senior director for global health security and bio-threats and that the post and office would be shut down. He has also asked congress to cut $252 million in unused funding for Ebola that was allocated to fight the Ebola epidemic in 2014 but not spent.

A forward detection system is most effective against threats like Ebola, SARS, H1N1 swine flu, MERS or some nasty bug as yet unidentified. The more time you have to react the more effective the reaction. We have the Distance Early Warning stations in the far north to detect Russian bombers coming over the pole. Most of the time they detect nothing. That doesn't mean that the money spent 'just in case' was wasted.
 

Garryowen

Deceased
There was an hypothesis a couple years ago, that perhaps blood from Ebola survivors could be used to confer immunity to the disease. Has there been any further information on that possibility?
 
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