With 49 deaths and more than 2,000 controlled people, the Ebola-hemorrhagic fever epidemic has gradually increased for 18 days in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo, weakened by violence and population displacements
The epidemic reported on August 1 in the province North Kivu left 49 of the 90 cases reported, according to the latest bulletin of the "epidemiological situation" of the Congolese Ministry of Health on Saturday.
The Directorate General for Disease Control identifies 22 deaths among 63 cases confirmed by laboratory tests on samples and 27 deaths likely due to Ebola due to an "epidemiological link" with the virus.
World Health Organization (WHO) "expects more cases It is unclear whether all transmission chains have been identified," a spokesperson, Tarik Jasarevic, told Friday to the reporters at the Geneva headquarters.
Most deaths (39) were recorded in the agricultural village of Mangina 30 km southwest of Beni, where the outbreak began. Three deaths were also reported in the neighboring province of Ituri.
Field teams also identified 2.157 "contacts" according to the ministry, ie people who may have been in contact with the virus. 19659003] Health workers do "a lot of work to follow these contacts, continue active cases and pave the way for immunization teams," says the Congolese Ministry of Health.
Vaccination is used as during the last epidemic in the province of Equateur in the northwest of the country, the end of which was announced on 24 July (33 deaths on 54 cases in total)
Medical teams in Beni and Mangina "Ben began to use the therapeutic molecule Mab114 as part of the treatment of patients, "said the Congolese Ministry of Health this week.
Mab114 is derived from "research on the serum d a survivor of the Ebola epidemic in Kikwit (central DRC) in 1995" and it is "the first therapeutic molecule to be used against the virus" during an epidemic, there said
] A case of healing of a 13-year-old girl was reported in Beni
Decimated families
"Two children have already died from the disease.The treatment centers for ebola in Beni and Mangina are currently taking care of six children who are or have been infected with the disease, so far Unicef has identified 53 orphan children by Ebola, "the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said Friday in a statement.
"I lost eight members of my family", Tested on the channel TV5Monde Dieudonné, a young man from Mangina.
Neighbor of North Kivu, Uganda, evaluated the possible response plan to the epidemic. Health Minister Sarah Opendi traveled to the border in Bundibugyo as head of a large delegation, the ministerial department said on Twitter on Sunday.
Conflict worsens the health crisis [19659003] The DRC (formerly Zaire) has had ten Ebola outbreaks since 1976. But this is the first time the virus has been seen in a densely populated area of armed conflict with large population movements.
Beni and his region are living under the threat of Ugandan rebels from the Allied Defense Force (ADF), alleged perpetrators of the massacre of hundreds of civilians since 2014, and the displacement of thousands of people.
A meeting with an AFP correspondent, 26-year-old farmer claims to have sought refuge in a Protestant church in Beni after escaping from ADF violence further north in Kokolo
"We are very much in this chapel and the conditions, that is, are not good, I am afraid of my health because Ebola is more dangerous than other diseases ", Micheline Kanduki is concerned
In Beni several sanitary dams have been installed for washing hands with chlorinated water and taking of temperature. A woman with a temperature of 39 degrees was immediately taken to the general hospital, AFP noted. "This is a suspicious case," a health worker commented.
Hand washing points and a center for suspicious cases were also set up in the capital of North Kivu, Goma (about one million inhabitants) an hour's drive from Beni.
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