Ebola virus disease – Democratic Republic of the Congo
Disease outbreak news: Update
26 September 2019
One of my favorite M.D. types has a sub-specialty in tropical and infectious diseases.
When I asked him about the "cure" that was announced in August he said it was very early to be using that terminology promising though the initial results had been.
26 September 2019
The Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo continues this week with 29 new confirmed cases reported in North Kivu and Ituri provinces from 18-24 September 2019, versus 57 in the previous week. This decrease in the number of cases should be interpreted with caution, as operational and security challenges in certain health zones make it difficult to undertake case detection and response functions.....MORE
There has been a recent increase in localized security or community-related incidents in several areas of operation. About a third of community incidents from August 2019, to date, occurred in Mambasa Health Zone. To strengthen the participation and engagement of local communities in this area, a WHO team of social scientists, community engagement, risk communication, and health promotion experts was set up to implement the Strategic Response Plan 4 (SRP4) approach and strategy together with La Commission Communication de Risque et Engagement Communautaire (CREC) sub-commission. The recent major security incident in Lwemba, within Mandima Health Zone, has halted response activities for the past nine days. This has limited contact tracing efforts, with 169 and 162 contacts lost to follow up in Lwemba and Mambasa, respectively.
During the past 21 days (from 18 September through 24 September 2019), a total of 126 confirmed cases were reported from 13 health zones (Table 1, Figure 2), with the majority of cases from Mambasa (25%, n=31), Mandima (18%, n=23), and Kalunguta (16%, n=20) health zones. Musienene Health Zone cleared 21 days without a new confirmed case of EVD.
As of 24 September, a total of 3175 EVD cases were reported, including 3063 confirmed and 112 probable cases, of which 2122 cases died (overall case fatality ratio 67%). Of the total confirmed and probable cases, 56% (1778) were female, 28% (902) were children aged less than 18 years, and 5% (161) were health workers....
One of my favorite M.D. types has a sub-specialty in tropical and infectious diseases.
When I asked him about the "cure" that was announced in August he said it was very early to be using that terminology promising though the initial results had been.
