Republic of Congo - Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association

As Congo’s Ebola Outbreak Drags On, Untracked Cases Sow Confusion

Donald G. McNeil Jr. — Sun, 22 Sep 2019 00:42:53 +0000

On tour in Africa, American officials said the U.S. would keep providing aid. But Congo’s response has been uneven, and the former health minister has been jailed.

CreditCreditHugh Kinsella Cunningham/EPA, via Shutterstock

The United States remains committed to fighting Ebola in Africa, American health officials said on Monday, but the scope of the current outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has become somewhat unclear.

There were rumors that Ebola had reached Tanzania, the officials noted. And the arrest of Congo’s former health minister, who until recently led his country’s response to the outbreak, has raised doubts about how effective that effort ever was.

The American delegation included Alex M. Azar, the secretary of Health and Human Services; Dr. Robert R. Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; and Tim Ziemer, a retired admiral who is a senior deputy assistant administrator at USAID.

The group toured Ebola response operations in Congo, Rwanda, and Uganda. In a telephone news conference as the trip neared its end, Mr. Azar said that, to date, the United States has spent $158 million in direct aid on the fight and another $238 million in technical assistance, including research on vaccines and treatments.

Of about 3,100 Congolese with confirmed infections, almost 2,100 have died. “It’s a genuine health emergency with significant challenges,” Mr. Azar said.

Several recent events show just how significant those challenges remain.

While the number of new confirmed cases has been dropping for weeks, it is too soon to tell if the intensity of transmission has actually slowed, the World Health Organization reported on Thursday. New hot spots keep appearing, and many victims still die outside of treatment centers with no known connections to previous cases.

Unlock more free articles. Create an account or log in

Only about 30 percent of patients seek treatment immediately after being infected when the chances of curing them with new antibody infusions is greatest, Dr. Redfield said on the call.

Fewer than 40 percent of the suspected contacts of each known patient are followed and vaccinated. Before officials can conclude that the epidemic is slowing down, Dr. Redfield said, “those numbers need to change.”

Health care workers continue to die of Ebola. Some of them were not vaccinated, which is mystifying since more than 200,000 doses of vaccine have been given out.

The W.H.O. said it had received only $55 million of the $120 million to $140 million that officials estimated would be needed through December to support its role in the response.

Some American government personnel are now working in front-line areas in eastern Congo, Mr. Azar said Monday, but he did not say more precisely where.

In August 2018, after several C.D.C. doctors nearly drove into a gun battle on a rural road, the State Department barred all American government personnel from dangerous areas of Congo, which originally forced the doctors to withdraw to the capital, Kinshasa, about 1,000 miles from the hot zone.

Permission to work in those areas is now granted “on a village-by-village basis after security assessments,” Mr. Azar said. A C.D.C. spokesman later said that 259 agency staff members had been deployed to Kinshasa, Geneva and elsewhere, including the hot zones, but declined to break down that figure further.

On Saturday, Congo’s former health minister, Dr. Oly Ilunga, was arrested and accused of embezzling more than $4 million in Ebola funds, according to an Agence France-Presse report quoting his lawyers and a police spokesman.

Dr. Ilunga resigned in July after the command of the response was taken from him and given to a presidential commission led by Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe, a renowned Ebola researcher. In April, Dr. Muyembe oversaw a scathing report on Dr. Ilunga’s efforts, accusing him of arrogance and weak leadership.

It said national health officials rented deluxe accommodations and expensive cars on visits to the Ebola outbreak area and were “brandishing large dollar bills” while local health workers went unpaid.

Observers said the two men had a frosty relationship, and Congo’s response had been slowed by what appeared to be a power struggle between supporters of the current president, Felix Tshisekedi, and his predecessor, Joseph Kabila. Dr. Ilunga was a holdover from the Kabila administration.

[Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.]

In Tanzania, local news outlets said there had been several suspected Ebola cases. The W.H.O.’s Africa office said last week that it had sent a team to urgently investigate one unexplained death.

On Sunday, Tanzania’s health minister, Ummy Ally Mwalimu, said most reports were unfounded, but the two cases that she considered suspicious had tested negative for Ebola.

Details of the cases were unclear, but news media reports suggested that one or both were doctors who recently visited or worked in Uganda. There are no confirmed Ebola cases in Uganda now.

Mr. Azar called on the government of Tanzania to comply with the W.H.O.’s international health regulations and share samples from the patients so the testing can be confirmed.

Donald G. McNeil Jr. is a science reporter covering epidemics and diseases of the world’s poor. He joined The Times in 1976 and has reported from 60 countries.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/16/health/ebola-congo-azar-fauci.html

[Disclaimer]

The post As Congo’s Ebola Outbreak Drags On, Untracked Cases Sow Confusion first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Congo ebola outbreak: Deadly virus and cholera killing HUNDREDS amid political unrest

Michael Armstrong — Mon, 21 Jan 2019 01:43:26 +0000

DEMOCRATIC Republic of Congo is racing to contain a deadly cholera outbreak that has swept through conflict-ravaged villages and now spread to Lubumbashi, the country’s second-biggest city, senior health official Modeste Balloy Kusiwa said.

Republic of Congo is racing to contain a deadly cholera outbreak (Image: ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images)

The cholera outbreak has killed more than 60 people in the south-eastern Katanga region, said the local health minister, who stressed that “dozens” of deaths had been recorded in Lubumbashi. The disease has killed 64 people since it broke out at the end of August, he continued. About 1,304 cases have been recorded. Cholera, which is endemic in DR Congo, is an acute diarrhoea disease that can kill within hours if left untreated.

But the vast central African nation is currently battling not one but two deadly epidemics, putting a major strain on relief efforts.

More than 400 people have been killed in the outbreak of Ebola in east Congo that began in early August and has infected at least 658 people, health officials said last week.

The death rate in the current epidemic – the country’s biggest and the world’s second-largest in history – is more than 60 percent, according to World Health Organisation (WHO) data.

But repeated attacks by armed, violent rebels on civilians, Ebola patients, aid workers, Congolese soldiers and UN peacekeepers have hobbled efforts to contain the deadly disease.

The cholera outbreak has killed more than 60 people in the south-eastern Katanga region (Image: Thierry Falise/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Ebola spreads through contact with bodily fluids. It causes haemorrhagic fever with severe vomiting, diarrhoea and bleeding.

It is a severe, often fatal illness in humans. The outbreak is concentrated in North Kivu and Ituri provinces.

The WHO warned last week that the risk of the disease spreading across borders remains “very high” at national and regional levels and said it was working urgently with DR Congo and its neighbours – Uganda, Rwanda and South Sudan – to limit that possibility.

Global health teams in DR Congo have also expressed concern that the ongoing election dispute could deepen public district and allow the epidemics to spiral out of control.

Ebola has infected at least 658 people in Congo, health officials said last week (Image: ISAAC KASAMANI/AFP/Getty Images)

More than 400 people have been killed in the outbreak of Ebola in east Congo that began in August (Image: JOHN WESSELS/AFP/Getty Images)

Infectious disease expert Jeremy Farrar said: “When you have political instability, public health always suffers.”

Last month’s election was supposed to mark DR Congo’s first uncontested democratic transfer of power after 18 years of turbulent rule by outgoing President Joseph Kabila.

But independent monitors have since flagged major problems with the election, including faulty voting machines and polling stations where scores of Congolese were unable to cast their ballot.

The powerful Catholic Church, which had a 40,000-strong team of observers, has also denounced the result.

The political standoff escalated on Sunday after the country’s top court backed the contested presidential election victory of Felix Tshisekedi. His main rival, runner-up Martin Fayulu, rejected the ruling, before calling for peaceful protests.

“Felix Tshisekedi will become the fifth president of the republic,” government spokesman Lambert Mende said after the Constitutional Court ruled that a legal challenge to the result filed by Mr Fayulu was inadmissible.

Mr Fayulu, for his part, said the decision had opened the way to a “constitutional coup d’etat,” prompting fears of more violence.

He added in another statement: “I am now considering myself as the sole legitimate President of the Democratic Republic of Congo.”

The Democratic Republic of Congo’s newly-elected President Felix Tshisekedi (Image: CAROLINE THIRION/AFP/Getty Images)

Mr Fayulu says Mr Tshisekedi and Mr Kabila cut a power-sharing deal, an accusation they both strongly deny.

Unrest over the vote has already killed some 34 people, wounded 59 and led to 241 “arbitrary arrests” in the past week, according to the UN human rights office.

Although the streets of the capital Kinshasa were calm on Sunday afternoon.

DR Congo is Africa’s biggest copper and cobalt producer and also mines gold and diamonds. But it is one of the world’s poorest countries with an annual budget of roughly £4 billion ($5 billion).

Source:

[Disclaimer]

The post Congo ebola outbreak: Deadly virus and cholera killing HUNDREDS amid political unrest first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.