Efforts to eradicate the deadly Ebola epidemic in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) are proving successful but “now we have to kill the virus”, the UN health agency said.
In an update to journalists in Geneva, the medic leading the World Health Organization’s campaign against the highly contagious virus said that while he could not say that it was beaten, it had been largely driven away from towns into rural areas.
“It is impossible to say outbreak is over, it’s not,” said Dr. Michael Ryan, Executive Director, WHO Health Emergencies Programme. “It is impossible to predict where the outbreak is going to go next…but we have significantly contained the virus in a much smaller geographic area; now we have to kill the virus.”
In the 14 months since the latest outbreak was declared in DRC – where the virus is endemic – more than 2,100 people have died, including over 160 health workers.
More than 1,000 individuals have also survived the disease and returned home, WHO reported last week.
Crediting cooperation with the DRC authorities and other health partners in DRC as one of the factors responsible for WHO’s relatively upbeat assessment, Dr. Ryan explained that the virus has been pushed back into some of the same remote areas where it was first detected in August last year.
He added that their inaccessibility – some communities can only be reached after a five-hour motorbike ride – and the fact that dozens of armed groups operate there, were the main complicating factors.
“Under the leadership of the Government and with our partners, I believe we have really squeezed the virus into a much smaller geographic area”, he said. “Essentially a triangle between Mambasa, Komanda, Beni, Mandima, which is a shared space between North Kivu and Ituri.”
Communities were also showing increased trust in highly skilled and hardworking frontline health workers, the WHO medic insisted.
This meant that potentially infected carriers were now seeking more timely, professional treatment in greater numbers than before, rather than going to up to four alternative health-providers and increasing the risk of spreading the contagion.
Key priorities now include ensuring that each potential case of Ebola infection is followed up and that the time it takes to admit them to a treatment facility is reduced, Dr. Ryan explained, to limit the chances of the disease spreading.
Mobile clinics set up by health partner Médecins Sans Frontières had successfully shown that people could be treated in their own communities, he added.
Original source: UN News
Published on 10 October 2019
