Health workers in Democratic Republic of Congo will begin a vaccination campaign on Monday aimed at containing an outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus, a spokeswoman for the health ministry said on Sunday.

Jessica Ilunga said that 4,000 doses of vaccine were shipped on Saturday to the city of Mbandaka, which last week registered its first cases of the disease in an urban area since the outbreak was declared earlier this month.

The outbreak is Congo’s ninth since the disease made its first known appearance in the 1970s. The cases in Mbandaka, a port city on the Congo river, have raised concerns that the virus could spread downstream to the capital Kinshasa, which has a population of 10 million.

The World Health Organization is sending 7,540 doses of the vaccine developed by Merck to Congo. It is also in talks about a second vaccine made by Johnson & Johnson.

A government spokesman said late on Saturday that Congo’s partners had promised to make available a total of 300,000 doses of vaccine.

(Source: Reuters)

Congolese and UN officials were racing to prevent a runaway Ebola outbreak in Congo on Thursday, working out the logistics of keeping newly arrived vaccines well below freezing in a steamy region on the equator with unreliable power.

World Health Organization (WHO) spokesman Christian Lindmeier said the UN body would convene an Emergency Committee meeting on Friday to consider the international risks.

This is the Democratic Republic of Congo’s ninth epidemic since the disease was identified in the 1970s, but also its most alarming because of the risk of transmission via regular river transport to the capital Kinshasa, a city of 10 million.

An experimental but highly effective vaccine is being deployed against the virus, with health workers being vaccinated first, but it needs to be kept 80 degrees Celsius below freezing in a humid region where daytime temperatures hover around 30.

“For now, the cold chain is guaranteed at -80 degrees until Kinshasa,” Health Minister Oly Ilunga told Reuters. “There is a fridge that will be prepared (on Thursday) … in Mbandaka and that will be at -80.”

“This vaccine is no longer experimental. The effectiveness has been proven and validated,” he added. “Now that we are facing the Ebola virus we must use all the resources we have.”

The WHO expert committee will decide whether to declare a “public health emergency of international concern”, which would trigger more international involvement, mobilizing research and resources, Lindmeier said.

Emergency Committees have been set up to advise on past outbreaks such as the 2016 Zika epidemic in Latin America and the huge West African Ebola outbreak that killed at least 11,300 people in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia from 2014 to 2016.

Mindful of criticism it received for being too slow during that epidemic, when it took months to convene an Emergency Committee, the WHO is moving fast on Congo’s latest outbreak.

The committee can advise WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on actions to be taken by Congo and other countries to try to halt the international spread of disease without unduly interfering with trade or transport.

The Kinshasa government reported the outbreak on May 8, one day after two samples tested positive, and within days the WHO was sending experts, preparing a helicopter “air bridge” to the site, and planning a vaccination campaign.

There have already been 44 suspected, probable or confirmed cases of Ebola, and 23 people have died. Potentially most worrying is a confirmed case in the city of Mbandaka, which has a population of about 1 million.

“The arrival of Ebola in an urban area is very concerning and WHO and partners are working together to rapidly scale up the search for all contacts of the confirmed case in the Mbandaka area,” said WHO Regional Director for Africa Matshidiso Moeti said in a statement.

Mbandaka is also connected via the Congo River to Kinshasa, a crowded city where millions live in unsanitary slums not connected to a sewer system.

Several public boats a day head from there downstream over the river to the capital. They are so overloaded with people that they sometimes topple over, toilets are filthy and water for washing absent.

The other Ebola cases were spread across sites in remote areas where the disease might not travel quickly.

Already the WHO has warned that there is a “moderate” regional risk because the disease could travel along the river to Central African Republic and Congo Republic. But it has said the global risk is low because of the remoteness of the area and the rapid response launched so far.

Even if the logistics of the ‘fridge bridge’ prove easy enough to overcome, “the vaccine is not a magic bullet,” Peter Salama, WHO’s medical emergency program head told Reuters this week, especially since health workers have been infected.

“Having healthcare workers infected is usually a ‘canary in the mine’ for potential amplification,” he said.

(Source: Reuters)

The foundation on which Lebialem is built has collapsed, and the possibility of rebuilding maybe smaller than a mere discussions.  A decision to shut-down Mary Health African of Hospital Fontem – Lebialem was reached yesterday.

The selfless people – the Focolare Movement, whose only mission is “Love and Unity” and who indisputably own the recognition, and from whom no one can take away that “Honor” for building the Lebialem from scratch to its current image, are leaving.

After a lengthy meeting lasting many hours of evaluating the current circumstances of a war on citizens; they searched through pages, and their-52-year history in the area; “life and death,’ then, a tearfully decision – leave.

One of their many challenges laminated at the meeting, many of the medications come in from outside the country, especially Europe, but now they are limited to, not merely the inability to bring in medication from Europe, but also dealing with ruthless uneducated warring soldiers, who do not understand the work of the gentle people.

In really war times, Hospitals – a place where the dying, the wounded and the sick come, are guarded and protected from any attack, but just over two weeks ago, an employee a member of their 80-persons strong-staff was seized,  tortured to death. The hospital called for a day of mourning from all other hospitals across Cameroon. No report here on the response; but the torture and killing of this employee, criss-cross the floor of discussion.

Today, the hospital lies flat, eight patients in total, in a 120 beds inpatient hospital, doctors and nurses take cover on a minute by minute base; and they are words of uncontrollable weeping, and wailing yesterday when this news of the Focolare’s departure broke.

Neither the War-President-in-Chief, nor anyone in that country knows what it takes to bring-in one of the members of the Focolare, or one of the doctors, or one of the nurses, from around the world to settle in that area.  And no one has the slightest ideas of the extensive medical service these people provide to the entire area, off course, this is why no one cares about whoever dies.

Source: LECDA Yahoo Group

Emergency teams of specialists from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and United Nations agencies have been deployed to the African country to tackle the spread of a new wave of Ebola epidemic.

UN and Congolese authorities said Sunday that the deployment over the weekend came after reports suggested that more than 30 people had been infected by Ebola.

A total of 18 people have been killed since April 4 when first cases of Ebola were reported. Authorities officially confirmed last Tuesday there was an outbreak centered around the village of Ikoko Impenge, near the town of Bikoro in the northwestern province of Equateur.

Health Minister Oly Ilunga Kalenga, along with officials from the World Health Organization (WHO) and UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), traveled to Equateur on Saturday after reports of the latest infection case emerged from the area a day earlier.

Kalenga said then government and UN agencies would do their best to root out the new epidemic as soon as possible.

“We have to pool our efforts quickly and align ourselves with the government response plan to fight this new epidemic effectively,” the minister said in a statement.

The Congolese government fears the Ebola virus, which killed more than 11,300 people in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia from 2014-216, could spread out of control.

The WHO is also acting more quickly in the DRC as it tries to avoid criticism that it faced over its slow response to the previous outbreak in West Africa.

“The WHO is strengthening its presence, positioning a dozen epidemiologists who will be divided on the axes of Mbandaka, Bikoro and Iboko to investigate alerts,” WHO’s Congo representative Allarangar Yokouide said Sunday.

Three separate locations covering 60 km (37 miles) or more in Equateur province have already been contaminated with Ebola as the provincial capital Mbandaka, with about 1 million inhabitants, is in immediate risk. Nine neighbors of Congo, especially Republic of Congo or Central African Republic, have been put on high alert as WHO fears a spread of the virus across the border.

The Ebola virus can be fatal as a result of damages it does on blood vessels which causes internal and external bleeding.

Source: Presstv

Nigeria has increased screening tests at airports and other points of entry as a precautionary measure following an outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the immigration service said on Thursday.

At least 17 people have died in an area of northwestern Democratic Republic of Congo, two years after the worst ever outbreak of the virus ended in West Africa after killing more than 11,300 people and infecting some 28,600, mainly in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Nigeria was hailed as having contained the virus in 2014, with 8 deaths, following fears that it could spread through the commercial capital of some 20 million inhabitants and across Africa’s most populous country of around 180 million people.

The Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) said thermometers had been used to monitor some entrants into the country since the virus last hit the region. Screening had been stepped up since the latest outbreak in Congo.

“We are using all the facilities available to detect the virus. That means extra use of thermometers,” said NIS spokesman Sunday James, speaking via phone.

“We must take extra measures to make sure people are screened at all the entry points into the country,” he said.

Ebola spread to Nigeria in 2014 when Patrick Sawyer, a Liberian-American diplomat, flew into the country from Liberia and collapsed at the main international airport in Lagos.

Kenya screens travelers at airports, border posts

Authorities in Kenya have also beefed up efforts to screening travelers at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, the border posts of Busia and Malaba.

Cabinet Secretary Sicily Kariuki told journalists that thermal guns had been installed at these points to detect persons with elevated temperatures.

A National Health Emergencies Council has also been established to act expeditiously to prevent any importation of Ebola.

Culled from Africa News

Cases of hemorrhagic fever were reported in an area of Congo that is facing an Ebola epidemic as far back as December and the first deaths were ported in January, a spokesman for the World Health Organization said in capital Kinshasa on Thursday.

The health ministry said on Tuesday that at least 17 people had died in an area of northwestern Democratic Republic of Congo where health officials have now confirmed an outbreak of Ebola, but did not give a time frame. Only two cases have been confirmed as Ebola, by a laboratory in Kinshasa.

A time span as long as five months since the first infection would be alarming, since it gives the virus a head start in infecting lots of people before action was taken to contain it.

This is the ninth time Ebola has been recorded in the vast, forested central African nation since it was first identified near the eastern Ebola river in the 1970s. It comes less than a year after an outbreak killed eight people in Congo’s remote northeastern forests.

“According to our early information, the cases have been reported since December and the first deaths were reported in January, but the link between the deaths and the epidemic has not yet been established,” WHO Congo spokesman Eugene Kabambi told Reuters.

The health ministry said on Thursday it had dispatched a team of 12 experts to the area to try to trace new contacts of the disease, identify the epicenter and all affected villages and provide resources.

The epidemic so far appears to be centered around the village of Ikoko Impenge, near the town of Bikoro, where local health officials had reported 21 patients showing signs of hemorrhagic fever, of whom all but four of whom had died.

“This advance team brought the first batches of equipment, mostly containing rapid diagnostic tests for the Ebola virus and laser thermometers,” the health ministry statement said.

It added that they had already arrived in the regional capital Mbandaka, about 150 km away from the affected area.

Ebola is best known and most feared for the internal and external bleeding it can cause in its victims, owing to damage done to blood vessels. Victims often die of shock but symptoms can be vague, including fever, muscle pain, diarrhea and nausea.

The worst Ebola epidemic in history ended in West Africa just two years ago after killing more than 11,300 people and infecting 28,600 in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.

Congo’s long experience of the disease and its vast, remote geography mean outbreaks are often localized and relatively easy to isolate and snuff out.

But Ikoko Impenge and Bikoro lie not far from the banks of the Congo River, an essential waterway for transport and commerce, downstream of which lie both Kinshasa and Brazzaville, capital of neighboring Congo Republic. Between them, the two cities have a population of more than 12 million.

(Source: Reuters)