INTERNATIONAL SPREAD DOCUMENTED, WHO SAYS<\/strong><\/p>\nThe DRC health ministry had said on Friday that 80 people had died in the new outbreak \u200bin the eastern province.<\/p>\n
The 17th outbreak in the country, where Ebola was first identified in 1976, could in fact be much larger, given the high positivity rate of the initial samples and increasing number of suspected cases being reported, the WHO said.<\/p>\n
The outbreak is “extraordinary” as there are no approved Bundibugyo virus-specific therapeutics \u200bor vaccines, unlike for Ebola-Zaire strains, it said. All but one of the country’s\u00a0previous outbreaks\u00a0were caused by the Zaire strain.<\/p>\n
The DRC-Uganda \u200boutbreak poses a public health risk to other countries, with some cases of an international spread already documented, the agency said, advising countries to activate \u200ctheir national \u2060disaster and emergency-management mechanisms and undertake cross-border screening and screening at main internal roads.<\/p>\n
In Uganda’s capital, Kampala, two apparently unrelated laboratory-confirmed cases, including one death, were reported on Friday and Saturday, from people travelling from the DRC, the WHO said.<\/p>\n
A laboratory-confirmed case was also reported in the DRC capital, Kinshasa, from a person returning from Ituri, the WHO said.<\/p>\n
Bundibugyo virus-disease contacts or cases should not travel internationally, unless \u200bas part of a medical evacuation, \u200bthe WHO said.<\/p>\n
The agency advised \u2060immediately isolating confirmed cases and monitoring contacts daily, with restricted national travel and no international travel until 21 days after exposure.<\/p>\n
At the same time, the WHO urged countries not to close their borders \u200bor restrict travel and trade out of fear, as this could lead to people and goods making \u200binformal border crossings \u2060that are not monitored.<\/p>\n
The DRC’s dense tropical forests are a natural reservoir for the Ebola virus.<\/p>\n
Jean Kaseya, director general of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a statement that he had requested technical guidance and recommendations on the potential need to declare the outbreak \u2060a public \u200bhealth emergency of continental security.<\/p>\n
The often-fatal virus, which causes fever, body aches, vomiting \u200band diarrhoea, spreads through direct contact with the bodily fluids of infected persons, contaminated materials or persons who have died from the disease, according to the Africa Centres \u200bfor Disease Control and Prevention.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda has \u200cbeen declared a public health emergency of international concern by the World Health Organisation, after 80 suspected deaths and nine laboratory-confirmed cases. The WHO said the outbreak, caused by the Bundibugyo virus, does not meet the criteria of a pandemic emergency but that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20887,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":3,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,2362,2854],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-africa","category-featured","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20886"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20888,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20886\/revisions\/20888"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}