Data published overnight into Tuesday showed the outbreak has recorded a total of 4,381 confirmed cases, including 2,011 deaths.

The grim toll comes nearly three months since the outbreak was declared on May 15. While it took about nine weeks for the outbreak to record 1,000 deaths, it’s taken just around three weeks to record the additional 1,000 deaths, showing how fast the health crisis is moving beyond the control of responders.

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Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/congo-ebola-death-toll-2000-outbreak-fastest-spreading/?fbclid=IwY2xjawTquzhwZG9mAWV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkEDIyMjAzOTE3ODgyMDA4OTIAAR6hCBljDneI9BCVGUHy5i_LR39dS58Ut_0DkqLbdqOLVkqC7Y5eBsgBsrJUig_aem_P7-0SVpLUGuBOnjM03oyag

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Dieudonne Duranthabo, a civil society coordinator in Komanda, in the Ituri province, told The Associated Press that the attackers stormed the church in Komanda town at around 1 a.m. Several houses and shops were also burnt.

“The bodies of the victims are still at the scene of the tragedy, and volunteers are preparing how to bury them in a mass grave that we are preparing in a compound of the Catholic church,” Duranthabo said.

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Source: https://apnews.com/article/congo-church-attack-islamic-state-deaths-da83ab694e991abfcc8166245a836d86

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Sweden confirmed its first case of the more contagious variant of mpox, a viral infection that spreads through close contact, marking the first time it has been found outside Africa.

The person was infected while in a part of Africa where there was a large outbreak of the disease, Olivia Wigzell, director-general at the Swedish public health agency, told a press conference.

Earlier on Thursday, the World Health Organization declared mpox a global public health emergency for the second time in two years, after an outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo that has spread to other countries.

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Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/15/mpox-variant-clade-i-case-sweden

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The protesters, seizing on a new tactic by targeting embassies, say the West supports neighbouring Rwanda, which is accused of backing the Tutsi-led M23 rebellion whose advance is threatening the strategic city of Goma in the east.

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A total of 3,004 people have reported symptoms of hemorrhagic fever in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo since Aug. 1 of last year, according to Congolese health officials, and 2,899 of those individuals have tested positive for Ebola virus disease, which is transmitted through contact with blood or secretions from an infected person and causes an often-fatal type of hemorrhagic fever.

There have been 2,006 deaths so far, including 1,901 people who died from confirmed cases of Ebola. The other deaths are considered probable cases. Just over 900 people sickened with the virus have recovered so far, according to Congolese health officials.

The grim milestone comes a month after the World Health Organization (WHO), the global health arm of the United Nations, declared the ongoing outbreak an international emergency. The WHO’s director-general has described the outbreak as more complex than the deadlier 2014-2016 epidemic in West Africa due to the region’s political and security instability, attacks on health workers, a highly mobile population and community mistrust and misinformation.

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Hugh Kinsella Cunningham/EPA via Shutterstock

This is the 10th Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the most severe there since 1976 when scientists first identified the virus near the eponymous Ebola River. It’s also one of the worst on record anywhere, second only to the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in multiple West African nations that infected 28,652 people and killed 11,325, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The current outbreak is now spread across three eastern Congolese provinces that share international borders with South Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi.

On Thursday, Uganda’s Ministry of Health said that a 9-year-old Congolese girl with Ebola had traveled across the border to Uganda from the Democratic Republic of the Congo with her mother to seek medical care. The child has been placed in isolation at an Ebola treatment center that was set up in a nearby Ugandan town in preparation for cross-border cases, according to the health ministry.

Although the average number of new cases reported per week in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has dipped slightly during the last few weeks, the number of affected areashas increased.

Cases have been identified in new geographical areas in recent weeks, though the epidemic’s epicenter is North Kivu province, where conflict and limited infrastructure has hampered the response.

A technical committee running the Ebola response and reporting directly to the Congolese president organized two days of training this week with health workers in the country’s capital, Kinshasa, to help prevent the potential spread of the virus there and prepare for the response by strengthening the city’s entry checkpoints. There are currently no suspected cases of Ebola in Kinshasa, which is some 1,700 miles west of the outbreak’s epicenter, according to a press release from the committee on Thursday.

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Jerome Delay/AP, FILE

Dr. Benoit Kebela, a Congolese epidemiologist on the committee, said the only effective weapon to stopping the spread of the virus is community involvement.

“It is community ownership that will stop this 10th epidemic,” Kebela said in a statement Thursday. “In the city of Kinshasa, there are community leaders such as street leaders, localities, neighborhoods, communes and the whole community with whom we can put an end to this epidemic.”

Bob Kitchen, vice president for emergencies at the International Rescue Committee, one of the aid groups on the ground assisting Congolese health officials, told ABC News in a statement Thursday that many people in the affected areas are “afraid to seek treatment for illnesses, worried they will be sent to an Ebola treatment center where they fear they could contract the disease.”

The “lack of community acceptance” remains the greatest obstacle to containing the outbreak, Kitchen said.

“Building trust with the community doesn’t just mean dialogue with the affected population,” he added. “It means working with the community to adapt the response and address the overall needs they are facing inside and outside of the Ebola outbreak.”

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The Associated Press

An experimental Ebola vaccine developed by American pharmaceutical company Merck that was tested in the West Africa epidemic was approved for use in the Democratic Republic of the Congo a week after the outbreak was declared last year. More than 206,000 people in the current outbreak zone have received the experimental vaccine since Aug. 8, 2018, according to Congolese health officials.

Meanwhile, two of four experimental treatments being tested in the outbreak are now being offered to all patients after showing promise in saving lives. Preliminary findings from a randomized controlled trial that began last November in four Ebola treatment centers in North Kivu indicated that patients receiving either of two antibody-based therapies, known as REGN-EB3 and mAb114, had a greater chance of survival compared to those receiving two other experiential drugs, known as ZMapp and remdesivir.

After a meeting to review the initial results, an independent monitoring board recommended all future patients be offered either REGN-EB3 or mAb114, while the other two treatments be stopped.

“From now on, we will no longer say that Ebola is incurable,” Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe, director-general of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s National Institute for Biomedical Research, which is co-sponsoring the clinical study, told reporters during a telephone briefing earlier this month.

But the epidemic is still not under control. Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), a medical charity which is providing care for Ebola patients in collaboration with Congolese authorities, said it is “extremely concerned about the lack of visibility on the actual epidemiological situation,” since a high number of Ebola deaths are being reported from where people live, rather than from treatment centers, in recent weeks.

“Many people have died of Ebola in their communities before they could be identified, diagnosed, and admitted for treatment of the disease,” MSF said in a statement Thursday. “Roughly a third of Ebola-related deaths have been diagnosed only post-mortem, which is a clear indication the response to the epidemic is failing in identifying and tracing people who’ve potentially contracted Ebola.”

Source: https://abcnews.go.com/International/worlds-2nd-largest-ebola-outbreak-surpasses-3000-cases/story?id=65261822

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A WHO expert committee declined on three previous occasions to advise the United Nations health agency to make the declaration for this outbreak, even though other experts say it has long met the required conditions. More than 1,600 people have died since August in the second-deadliest Ebola outbreak in history, which is unfolding in a region described as a war zone.

A declaration of a global health emergency often brings greater international attention and aid, along with concerns that nervous governments might overreact with border closures.

The declaration comes days after a single case was confirmed in Goma, a major regional crossroads in northeastern Congo on the Rwandan border, with an international airport. Also, a sick Congolese fish trader traveled to Uganda and back while symptomatic — and later died of Ebola.

While the risk of regional spread remains high, the risk outside the region remains low, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said after the announcement in Geneva.

The international emergency “should not be used to stigmatize or penalize the very people who are most in need of our help,” he said. Tedros insisted that the declaration was not made to raise more money — even though WHO estimated “hundreds of millions” of dollars would be needed to stop the epidemic.

Dr. Joanne Liu, president of Doctors Without Borders, said she hoped the emergency designation would prompt a radical reset of Ebola response efforts.

“The reality check is that a year into the epidemic, it’s still not under control, and we are not where we should be,” she said. “We cannot keep doing the same thing and expect different results.”

Liu said vaccination strategies should be broadened and that more efforts should be made to build trust within communities.

The U.S. Agency for International Development applauded the WHO decision and said USAID officials would “continue to scale up life-saving support” to end the outbreak.

This is the fifth such declaration in history. Previous emergencies were declared for the devastating 2014-16 Ebola outbreak in West Africa that killed more than 11,000 people, the emergence of Zika in the Americas, the swine flu pandemic and polio.

WHO defines a global emergency as an “extraordinary event” that constitutes a risk to other countries and requires a coordinated international response. Last month, the outbreak spilled across the border for the first time when a family brought the virus into Uganda after attending the burial in Congo of an infected relative. Even then, the expert committee advised against a declaration.

Alexandra Phelan, a global health expert at Georgetown University Law Center, said Wednesday’s declaration was long overdue.

“This essentially serves as a call to the international community that they have to step up appropriate financial and technical support,” she said but warned that countries should be wary of imposing travel or trade restrictions.

Such restrictions “would actually restrict the flow of goods and health care workers into affected countries so they are counterproductive,” she said. Future emergency declarations might be perceived as punishment and “might result in other countries not reporting outbreaks in the future, which puts us all at greater risk.”

WHO had been heavily criticized for its sluggish response to the West Africa outbreak, which it repeatedly declined to declare a global emergency until the virus was spreading explosively in three countries and nearly 1,000 people were dead. Internal documents later showed WHO held off partly out of fear a declaration would anger the countries involved and hurt their economies.

The organization’s emergency committee will meet again within three months to assess the situation. Committee members will review whether the outbreak is still a global emergency and whether other measures are needed.

Wednesday’s announcement prompted fear in eastern Congo, where many do business across borders and travel overseas.

“I am vaccinated and I protect myself against Ebola,” said Zoe Kibwana, a 46-year-old shoe salesman who does business in Uganda, just 70 kilometers (40 miles) from Beni. “Closing the borders would handicap our economy. The health ministry and WHO need to end this epidemic as soon as possible.”

The current outbreak is spreading in a turbulent Congo border region where dozens of rebel groups are active and where Ebola had not been experienced before. Efforts to contain the virus have been hurt by mistrust among wary locals that has prompted deadly attacks on health workers. Some infected people have deliberately evaded health authorities.

The pastor who brought Ebola to Goma used several fake names to conceal his identity on his way to the city, Congolese officials said. WHO on Tuesday said the man had died and health workers were scrambling to trace dozens of his contacts, including those who had traveled on the same bus.

Congo’s minister of health resisted the characterization of the outbreak as a health emergency.

“We accept the decision of the committee of experts but one hopes that it’s a decision that wasn’t made under pressure of certain groups that want to use this as a way to raise funds for certain humanitarian actors,” said Dr. Oly Ilunga.

Those working in the field say the outbreak is clearly taking a turn for the worse despite advances that include the widespread use of an experimental but effective Ebola vaccine.

Dr. Maurice Kakule was one of the first people to survive the current outbreak after he fell ill while treating a woman last July before the outbreak had even been declared.

“What is clear is that Ebola is an emergency because the epidemic persists despite every possible effort to educate people,” he told the Geneva meeting.

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Cheng reported from London. Associated Press writers Krista Larson and Al-Hadji Kudra Maliro in Beni, Congo, and Saleh Mwanamilongo in Kinshasa, Congo, also contributed to this report.

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Follow Africa news at https://twitter.com/AP_Africa

Source: https://wtop.com/national/2019/07/ebola-outbreak-in-congo-declared-a-global-health-emergency/

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Agence France-Presse: High-security Ebola burials spark dismay, anger in DR Congo
“People in Ebola-hit eastern DR Congo are struggling to come to terms with high-security burials that are part of a hard-pressed strategy to roll back the disease. Anyone who dies of the highly infectious hemorrhagic fever has to be buried in carefully controlled conditions designed to minimize the risk of infection from body fluids. But that means ceremonies are carried out in sanitized conditions, with relatives and friends kept at a distance — for many, a traumatic break with traditions that demand the body of a loved-one be seen or touched…” (5/21).

Additional coverage of the Ebola outbreak in DRC is available from Al Jazeera, Associated Press, and PBS NewsHour.

Source: https://www.kff.org/news-summary/who-dg-tedros-calls-for-unity-to-end-drc-ebola-outbreak-sanitary-burials-of-victims-upset-family-members-in-eastern-congo/

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In recent months, public health experts have claimed the deadly Ebola virus outbreak that has been ravaging the Congo will not become a global health threat.

However, recent events and updates paint a less optimistic picture.

Last week, the World Health Organization issued a statement on the ongoing Ebola outbreak in North Kivu and Ituri provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

If this Ebola outbreak isn’t stopped soon, it could become a global threat.

The recent spike of cases increases the threat that the deadly virus will spread to other countries and efforts must be redoubled to stop it, the WHO said last Friday after a meeting of its expert committee.

On April 12, the WHO claimed that while the ongoing Ebola outbreak in Congo is of “deep concern” the situation does not yet warrant being declared a global emergency.

But don’t get too comfortable.

Here are a few concerning excerpts from the statement:

However, the Committee wished to express their deep concern about the recent increase in transmission in specific areas, and therefore the potential risk of spread to neighbouring countries.

Special emphasis should be placed on addressing the rise in case numbers in the remaining epicentres, notably Butembo, Katwa, Vuhovi, and Mandima.

Because there is a very high risk of regional spread, neighbouring countries should continue to accelerate current preparedness and surveillance efforts, including vaccination of health care workers and front-line workers in surrounding countries.

Cross-border collaboration should continue to be strengthened, including timely sharing of data and alerts, cross-border community engagement and awareness raising. In addition, work should be done to better map population movements and understand social networks bridging national boundaries.

The Committee maintains its previous advice that it is particularly important that no international travel or trade restrictions should be applied. Exit screening, including at airports, ports, and land crossings, is of great importance; however, entry screening, particularly in distant airports, is not considered to be of any public health or cost-benefit value. (source)

This Ebola outbreak has no end in sight.

The outbreak has become the second-deadliest in history, behind the West African one from 2014-16 that killed more than 11,300 people.

As of April 15, the outbreak has claimed 821 lives. The total case number is 1273. Unfortunately, both numbers are soaring, and experts say it is not even close to ending:

Some health experts predicted months ago that the outbreak would end within six months’ time. As complications keep appearing, the time frame is pushed back.

“Given the average number of cases we’re seeing now, this is not going to be over for at least another six months or more,” Tariq Riebl with the International Rescue Committee said Friday.

The chair of WHO’s expert committee that unanimously decided the outbreak is not yet a global emergency, Robert Steffen, said experts were “moderately optimistic” the outbreak could be contained within a “foreseeable time.” (source)

A top Red Cross official told the Associated Press he’s “more concerned than I have ever been” about the possible regional spread of the Ebola virus in Congo after a recent spike in cases.

Emanuele Capobianco spoke by phone ahead of a key World Health Organization meeting in Geneva later Friday about whether to declare the Ebola outbreak in northeastern Congo an international health emergency.

Capobianco, head of health and care at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, cited Congolese health ministry statistics announced on Thursday showing 40 new cases over two days this week.

He called that rate unprecedented in the current eight-month outbreak. (source)

Here’s why Ebola is so dangerous.

As Daisy Luther explained in It’s Back: How to Prep for Ebola 2.0, “Part of the reason Ebola seems particularly terrifying is the graphic presentation, which is the stuff of horror movies. It is a hemorrhagic disease, which means that it can cause bleeding from the mouth, eyes, nose, and rectum.”

Here’s how it progresses:

The incubation period, that is, the time interval from infection with the virus to onset of symptoms is 2 to 21 days. Humans are not infectious until they develop symptoms. First symptoms are the sudden onset of fever fatigue, muscle pain, headache and sore throat. This is followed by vomiting, diarrhoea, rash, symptoms of impaired kidney and liver function, and in some cases, both internal and external bleeding (e.g. oozing from the gums, blood in the stools). Laboratory findings include low white blood cell and platelet counts and elevated liver enzymes. (source)

But it isn’t just the gruesome visuals. Ebola kills up to 90% of those infected, depending on the strain. This outbreak is the Zaire strain of Ebola, which is the same one that made it to America back in 2014.

Could an Ebola outbreak occur in America?

The odds of an Ebola outbreak occurring in the US have long been considered extremely low, mainly because of how the disease is transmitted. People in America usually don’t eat bushmeat, and we have much better sanitation, health education, and health care facilities.

National Geographic explains how Ebola is transmitted from animals to humans:

Ebola is a zoonosis, or a disease that can “spill over” into humans from nonhuman animals in the wild that carry the sickness. Researchers don’t know for sure which animals are Ebola carriers, but there’s evidence that fruit bats may play a role in spreading the virus to other animals, such as chimpanzees, gorillas, and duikers. Humans, in turn, can come into contact with the virus by interacting with infected animals, such as by hunting or preparing bushmeat.

Ebola spreads through contact with bodily fluids—such as blood, urine, feces, vomit, breast milk, and saliva—from people who have fallen ill or died from EVD. The virus gets into the body through breaks in the skin or through mucous membranes, such as those in the eyes, nose, or mouth. Contaminated needles or syringes also can transmit the virus, and there’s a strong chance that it can also spread via sexual contact. The virus can persist in semen, even after a man has recovered from EVD. (source)

It is possible that migrants from Africa could bring Ebola to the US.

Some independent news outlets are reporting that 20 African migrants from the Democratic Republic of the Congo were monitored for Ebola and other diseases at the border of Mexico and Laredo, Texas. Full disclosure: Those reports have been difficult to verify and may not be factual.

However, in an article dated April 16 and titled Hundreds of Africans tried to reach the United States. Now they’re stuck in Mexico, The Washington Post reported:

Although the vast majority of migrants passing through Mexico on their way to the United States come from Central America, hundreds are from African countries such as Congo, Cameroon and Ethiopia.

At the Casa Del Migrante Amar, a migrant shelter in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, on the Texas border, more than 80 African migrants have gathered. Most are from Congo, Ethi­o­pia or Eritrea.

So, we do know that migrants from Congo are trying to get to the United States, but data on how many have actually arrived – and whether any of them have been screened for Ebola – are not available.

For now, getting prepared for a possible outbreak isn’t a bad idea. To learn how, please see It’s Back: How to Prep for Ebola 2.0.

Source: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-18/ebola-outbreak-congo-close-becoming-global-emergency

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Twenty-three people are known to have died.

The Ebola outbreak in DR Congo has spread from the countryside into a city, prompting fears that the disease will be increasingly hard to control.

Health Minister Oly Ilunga Kalenga confirmed a case in Mbandaka, a city of a million people about 130km (80 miles) from the area where the first cases were confirmed earlier this month.

The city is a major transportation hub with routes to the capital Kinshasa.

Forty-two people have now been infected and 23 people are known to have died.

Ebola is a serious infectious illness that causes internal bleeding and often proves fatal. It can spread rapidly through contact with small amounts of bodily fluid and its early flu-like symptoms are not always obvious.

• Why Ebola keeps coming back
• Why Ebola is so dangerous
• How not to catch Ebola

Why is the spread to a city such a worry?

The 2014-16 West Africa outbreak, which killed 11,300 people, was particularly deadly because it spread to the capital cities of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Senior World Health Organization (WHO) official Peter Salama said the spread to Mbandaka meant there was the potential for an “explosive increase” in cases.

“This is a major development in the outbreak,” he told the BBC. “We have urban Ebola, which is a very different animal from rural Ebola. The potential for an explosive increase in cases is now there.”

Mr Salama, the WHO’s Deputy Director-General of Emergency Preparedness and Response, said Mbandaka’s location on the Congo river, widely used for transportation, raised the prospect of Ebola spreading to surrounding countries such as Congo-Brazzaville and the Central African Republic as well as downstream to Kinshasa, a city of 10 million people.

“This puts a whole different lens on this outbreak and gives us increased urgency to move very quickly into Mbandaka to stop this new first sign of transmission,” he said.

• Mapping the West Africa Ebola outbreak

What is being done to contain the outbreak?

Confirmed, probable and suspected cases of Ebola have been recorded in three health zones of Congo’s Equateur province, the WHO said.

Health workers had identified 430 people who may have had contact with the disease and were working to trace more than 4,000 contacts of Ebola patients, who had spread across north-west DR Congo, the organisation said.

Many of these people were in areas only reachable by motorbike, Mr Salama said.

On Wednesday more than 4,000 doses of an experimental vaccine sent by the WHO arrived in the country with another batch expected soon.

The vaccine from pharmaceutical firm Merck is unlicensed but was effective in limited trials during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

It needs to be stored at a temperature of between -60 and -80 C. Electricity supplies in Congo are unreliable.

Observers described the international response as “remarkable and very rapid”.

“The logistic issues getting to this very remote area are quite considerable, and it will also be considerable on the ground to identify who should be vaccinated and to get out in this vast and very difficult area and provide vaccination in an appropriate way,” New York-based Ebola expert Dr Laurie Garrett told the BBC.

“It’s never been done before in the midst of an exploding outbreak so we’ll watch it very closely.”

Why does Ebola keep coming back?

There have been three outbreaks in DR Congo since the 2014-16 epidemic. Ebola is thought to be spread over long distances by fruit bats and is often transmitted to humans via contaminated bushmeat.

It can also be introduced into the human population through close contact with the blood, organs or other bodily fluids of infected animals. These can include chimpanzees, gorillas, monkeys, antelope and porcupines.

The disease is endemic to the area and it is not possible to eradicate all the animals who might be a host for Ebola. As long as humans come in contact with them, there is always a possibility that Ebola could return.

• Was bushmeat behind the 2014 Ebola outbreak?

Image copyrightREUTERS

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