Efforts to trace contacts in the Democratic Republic of Congo to try to contain the country’s \u200bEbola outbreak have improved but are below target, the World \u200cHealth Organization said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
There have been 550 confirmed cases of Ebola, including 101 deaths, according to the WHO’s latest figures, as well as 94 \u200bsuspected cases.<\/p>\n
The outbreak of the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola \u200bwas announced on May 15, though officials have since said \u2060it went undetected for weeks, complicating efforts to bring it \u200bunder control.<\/p>\n
“We have reached 62% of contacts, but our target is \u200b90-95%,” Dr Abdi Mahamud from the WHO told reporters in Geneva via video link from Bunia in the DRC.<\/p>\n
“It is slow steady progress, but we have \u200bnot reached where we want to be,” he said, pointing to \u200bthe importance of healthcare workers building trust on the ground to identify and \u200crefer \u2060cases, and help with contact tracing.<\/p>\n
“With the ramp up of contact tracing and community workers, we hope to achieve that target in the coming weeks,” he added.<\/p>\n
Mistrust and resistance have hampered the response, \u200bwith attacks on \u200bburial teams and \u2060treatment centres reported.<\/p>\n
The latest attack occurred on Sunday when two people were seriously injured and two \u200bvehicles damaged when a burial team was targeted at \u200bthe \u2060Nyamurongo cemetery in Bunia, a source familiar with the government response said.<\/p>\n
Separately, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a \u2060release on \u200bTuesday that contact tracing was uneven – \u200bwith 78% reached in Bunia but 0% in some health zones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Efforts to trace contacts in the Democratic Republic of Congo to try to contain the country’s \u200bEbola outbreak have improved but are below target, the World \u200cHealth Organization said on Tuesday. There have been 550 confirmed cases of Ebola, including 101 deaths, according to the WHO’s latest figures, as well as 94 \u200bsuspected cases. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18074,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":6,"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":[3016,62],"class_list":["post-21085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-africa","category-featured","category-health","tag-democratic-republic-of-congo-drc","tag-world-health-organization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21085","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=21085"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21085\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21086,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21085\/revisions\/21086"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}