Two Democratic Republic of Congo Ebola patients who fled hospital in the city of Mbandaka on Monday attended a prayer meeting with 50 people hours before they died, Jean-Clement Cabrol, an emergency medical coordinator at Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), said on Thursday, May 24, 2018.

Health officials are scrambling to contain an outbreak of the deadly disease in the heavily populated port city in northwest Congo that is believed to have killed 22 people since April.

Two new deaths from Ebola and seven new confirmed cases have been recorded in Democratic Republic of Congo, the health ministry said on Tuesday.

One of the deaths occurred in the provincial capital of Mbandaka, according to a daily bulletin.

A nurse also died in the village of Bikoro, where the outbreak was first detected, ministry spokeswoman Jessica Ilunga told Reuters.

The ministry said the seven new confirmed cases were registered in Bikoro.

Health officials administered an experimental vaccine on Monday to 33 medical workers and Mbandaka residents, WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic told reporters in Geneva.

The vaccine manufacturer Merck has provided WHO with 8,640 doses of the vaccine and an additional 8,000 doses are expected to be available in the coming days, WHO said.

Congo’s ninth outbreak of Ebola since 1976 is believed to have killed at least 28 people so far.

Officials are particularly concerned by its appearance in Mbandaka, a crowded trading hub on the Congo River with road, water and air links to Congo’s capital, Kinshasa.

NAN reports that the WHO said it will need $26 million for the Ebola Response in the DRC over the next three months.

WHO said it had also released $2 million from its Contingency Fund for Emergencies, to scale up the Ebola response.

The Government of DRC, with the support of WHO partners, is preparing to vaccinate high risk populations against Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) in affected health zones.

The organisation said health workers operating in affected areas were being vaccinated on Monday and community outreach had started to prepare for the ring vaccination.

More than 7,500 doses of the rVSV-ZEBOV Ebola vaccine have been deployed to DRC to conduct vaccination in the northwestern Equator Province where 46 suspected, probable and confirmed Ebola cases and 26 deaths have been reported – as of Friday.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) remains on an “epidemiological knife-edge” regarding the spread of the deadly Ebola disease, in spite of the quick response by authorities and international partners to the threat, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned.

Speaking in Geneva at the World Health Assembly, Dr Peter Salama, WHO Deputy Director-General, who heads Emergency Preparedness and Response, said that there were several reasons why the current outbreak – which has claimed 27 lives since it was declared on May 8 – had yet to be contained.

Epidemiology is the branch of medicine which deals with the analysis of the incidence, distribution, and control of diseases’ conditions in defined populations.

“It’s hard to recall a situation of an outbreak where a Government has responded more quickly and more decisively than in this outbreak,” Salama said.

The WHO official added that it was “a multi-partner effort and it’s not over yet. We’re really just at the beginning”.

“I used the phrase yesterday that we’re on the epidemiological knife-edge of this response, the next few weeks will really tell if this outbreak will spread to urban areas or if we’re going to be able to keep it under control.”

Unlike previous Ebola events in DRC – this is the country’s ninth since 1976 — the 2018 outbreak has been complicated by the fact that it involved rural and urban areas, he said.

“This has raised the chances that it might spread both nationally and internationally,” Salama said.

He noted particularly since the city of Mbandaka – where the disease was identified after first surfacing in the relatively remote Bikoro – is close to the Congo river, which acts as the main transport link to DRC’s capital, Kinshasa.

”With 58 confirmed, probable or suspected cases of the disease in the country as of Wednesday, effective tracing of anyone who had come into contact with the disease would “make or break” the response to Ebola,” Salama said.

He described the task ahead as “the detective work of epidemiology”, adding that medical personnel at a hospital in Wangata, Mbandaka, were tracing some 600 contacts from three separate chains of transmission.

One of these chains was associated with a funeral in a neighbouring town of Bikoro; another was linked to a health-care facility in the small village of Iboko; and the third related to a church ceremony.

“Each one has the potential to expand if not controlled,” Salama said.

The WHO official confirmed that a selective, or “ring vaccination” programme had just begun and that efforts were ongoing to ensure that the Ebola drug could be stored in “ultracold” conditions at between -60 and -80°C.

WHO has repeatedly stressed that vaccination was only one measure among many in any outbreak response.

That message was repeated in Geneva by Tedros Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, who praised the commitment and sacrifice of the communities and health workers on the front line, as “the most important element in fighting this outbreak”.

The WHO chief also underlined that the coordination among international health partners was essential, too, before highlighting that even he had problems in accessing rural Bikoro to see the problem first-hand, during his visit to the area shortly after the beginning of the outbreak.

By Prudence Arobani

Following Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central Africa, the Federal Government has increased surveillance in all airports to forestall the re-occurrence of 2014 experience.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) and the Port Health Services personnel have increased the screening of international passengers at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja.

Mrs Henrietta Yakubu, General Manager, Corporate Affairs of FAAN, told NAN that the organisation had not relaxed its surveillance at the airports since the case of the virus was first recorded in Nigeria in 2014.

Yakubu said that all the equipment and personnel used in combatting the virus in 2014 were still very much on ground at the airports.

She explained that the thermal scanners that monitor temperature of passengers and capture their pictures were still functioning very well in all airports.

“When passengers walk pass the scanners, it registers their temperature and if yours is high, you are pulled aside for observation.

“Since the virus was reported in Congo, all relevant agencies, including the Port Health Services have been mobilised and are collaborating effectively to ensure the safety of passengers and airport users at all time,” she said.

NAN recalls that Congo had been battling to stem the spread of the virus through Ebola vaccination campaign it began on Monday in a northwest provincial capital.

It was reported that the virus had spread from rural towns into an urban centre with over a million people.

The Federal Government had on May 9 directed the relevant ministries of help to step up emergency surveillance activities at all land and airport borders, so as to keep Nigerians safe.

The disease was first discovered in Congo in the 1970s. It is spread through direct contact with body fluids from an infected person, who suffers severe bouts of vomiting and diarrhoea.

More than 11,300 people died in an Ebola outbreak in the West African countries of Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone between 2013 and 2016.

By Sumaila Ogbaje

The Director Public Health of Adamawa State Ministry of Health, Dr Bwalki Dilli, has said that the number of those infected by suspected Cholera outbreak in Mubi has increased from 134 to 176.

Dilli told News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Wednesday, May 23, 2018 in Yola, the state capital, that no additional death has been recorded apart from the initial 12.

He said that sufficient drugs had been mobilised for the patients receiving treatment in Mubi General Hospital with the support of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

“The outbreak is still contained within Mubi North and Mubi South Local Government Areas (LGAs) of the state,” Dilli said.

Also speaking to NAN, the chairman of Mubi North LGA, Alhaji Musa Bello, lauded the prompt intervention by health officials and called on the public to give the needed support and cooperation.

Bello said the outbreak started following a heavy downpour that flooded many sources of water particularly wells in rural communities.

He called for more personal and environmental hygiene, particularly the need to stop open defecation.

By Yakubu Uba