The World Health Organization announced yesterday, Wednesday, that the Ebola epidemic, which has spread in early September in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has so far resulted in 42 deaths out of 64 confirmed injuries, noting that the risk of its regional spread is still moderate.
The Ebola virus is very infected and is often fatal, although recently reached vaccines and treatments, and has killed about 15,000 people in Africa during the past fifty years.
The country recorded between 2018 and 2020 worse on its territory, with about 2300 deaths out of 3,500 injuries.
The Democratic Congolese authorities announced last September last September launching a vaccination campaign after monitoring the return of the virus in the central Casai region.
“The number of confirmed injuries reached 64, including 42 deaths,” the Director General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanum Guipressus said in a letter via the X platform.
The organization revealed a response plan aimed at containing the epidemic in Kasai, considering that the risk of its spread is “high” at the national level, but it is moderate in neighboring countries, and weak at the global level.
She pointed out that the exacerbation of the situation is caused by “a lack of protection equipment, an incomplete tracker for mixes, late monitoring, and unsafe burial practices.”
She added that the “large transfer of the population” and the resort to “traditional therapists” puts “pressure on a fragile health system already, which increases the risk of geographically spreading.”
The organization estimated the death rate in the current wave at 45.7%, knowing that it was ranging in previous waves between 25%and 90%.
The new outbreak belongs to the “Zaire” breed of the virus, which is one of the six known strains, three of which caused wide epidemics (Bondpogio, Sudan, and formerly Zayer).
The “International Coordination Team to provide vaccines” agreed to send about 45,000 additional doses of anti -counter -vaccines to the Democratic Congo, according to the organization.
Ebola was first discovered in 1976 in Zayer (the previous name of the Democratic Congo). The virus is transmitted through body fluids, and the injured person does not become contagious except after the appearance of symptoms that include fever, vomiting, bleeding and diarrhea after a nursery range between two days and 21 days.