Drc

Dr Peter Stafford’s wife and four children are also being monitored for symptoms amid Ebola outbreak in the DRCAn American doctor who contracted Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been flown to Germany for treatment, along with his wife and four children, as the World Health Organization warned of the “scale and speed” of the outbreak.Authorities have reported at least 134 suspected deaths and more than 500 cases of the hemorrhagic Bundibugyo virus, which has no approved treatments or vaccines. The outbreak, which has spread into urban areas, has been declared a public health emergency requiring international response. Continue reading...

The emergency caused by the Bundibugyo variant has revived fears shaped by conflict, mistrust and delayed detection, even as the WHO moves quicklyTo be around the centre of an Ebola outbreak is to become used to the smell of chlorine. At hospitals and government buildings, surfaces are sprayed with it and hands washed in a 0.05% solution that can kill the virus in 60 seconds.Infrared handheld thermometers take temperatures at airports and border crossings. Any indication of a fever prevents passage. Contact-tracing teams crisscross the countryside. Continue reading...

At least 130 people thought to have been killed, says Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus before emergency meeting‘It’s heartbreaking’: panic in eastern DRC over return of EbolaThe director general of the World Health Organization has said he is deeply concerned about the scale and the speed of the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said there had been at least 500 suspected cases of Ebola and 130 suspected deaths in DRC since the new outbreak began. Thirty cases had been confirmed in DRC’s north-eastern province of Ituri, and one death and one case had been confirmed in Kampala, Uganda, he added. In addition, he said, there was “one US citizen confirmed positive and transferred to Germany, as reported by the US”. 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...

Judge called Adriana Maria Quiroz Zapata’s deportation to the Democratic Republic of Congo ‘likely illegal’A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to bring a Colombian woman back to the US from the Democratic Republic of Congo, after she was deported to the African country that had refused to accept her.The deportation of Adriana María Quiroz Zapata “was likely illegal”, the US district judge Richard Leon ruled on Wednesday. Continue reading...

15 South American migrants and asylum seekers deported from the U.S. to the DRC are now living in uncertainty in a country an with ongoing armed conflict, where they have no ties.(Image credit: Schalk Van Zuydam)