Breaking Ebola

• The first patients have been enrolled in a record-breaking clinical trial for two potential Ebola drugs in the Ituri region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. • The research program was launched with unprecedented speed, beginning just six weeks after the WHO declared the outbreak a public health emergency on May 17. • This trial is critical because there are currently no approved drugs available to help medical teams treat patients and reduce mortality rates during the outbreak.

Two drugs are being trialled in the Ituri region in a programme set up just six weeks after the outbreak was declared, with hopes it will reduce mortality ratesThere is no approved drug to help the medical teams scrabbling to save lives in the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo – but there are hopes that could change within months as the first patients are enrolled in a treatment trial.It is a record pace to set up and start this kind of research, scientists said, with patients enrolled just six weeks after the outbreak being declared a public health emergency of international concern by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 17 May. Continue reading...

Residents of Ituri province fear spread of disease and economic impact of outbreak six years after the last“On public transport, in bars and at mass gatherings, everyone is talking about Ebola,” said Gloire Mumbesa, 38, a resident of Mongbwalu, a mining town in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He said cases of the disease had been reported locally and panic was engulfing the area because of the lack of a vaccine for the Bundibudyo strain. “The fear is that this disease may spread to many other areas.”Residents of Ituri province in eastern DRC, where the World Health Organization announced an outbreak of Ebola last week, are living in growing fear of the possible continued spread of the disease and its deadly impacts, nearly six years after the last outbreak in the region ended. Continue reading...