42-day countdown to clear DRC, Guinea of Ebola begins
For an Ebola outbreak to be declared over, there must not be any new cases for 42 days.
CAPE TOWN, March 26 (ANA) – A countdown to declaring the latest Ebola outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Guinea has been initiated after the last patients were discharged this week, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
According to the WHO, the last Ebola patient from the outbreak in the DRC was discharged from a treatment centre in Katwa, North Kivu province, on Monday, 37 days after a resurgence of the disease was identified in the region.
The last patient in Guinea was discharged on Tuesday night in the city of N’Zérékoré, 38 days after the start of that outbreak, which has been genetically linked to the West African epidemic that ended in 2016.
On February 7, the DRC’s health ministry said a new Ebola death had been confirmed in Butembo in North Kivu province. The dead woman was the 42-year-old wife of an Ebola survivor.
Guinea declared an Ebola outbreak in one of its regions on February 14, when seven people fell ill with diarrhoea, vomiting and bleeding after attending a burial in Goueke, near the Liberian border, according to international news broadcaster Al Jazeera.
For an Ebola outbreak to be declared over, there must not be any new cases for 42 days, the length of two incubation periods, according to the WHO.
During the outbreaks, figures showed that the DRC had 12 cases and six deaths, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
According to the WHO, more than 1,700 people were vaccinated in the outbreak to mitigate further spread.
The Guinea outbreak, the first in the country since the West African epidemic that left more than 28,000 people infected and 11,300 dead, has resulted in 18 cases and nine deaths. More than 3,900 people have been vaccinated during the outbreak, according to the WHO.
The WHO said teams will remain on the ground to support local health authorities with surveillance, pathogen detection and community engagement through the 42-day countdown.
On Tuesday, the global non-profit organisation CDC Foundation announced it had provided support of US$500,000 for the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) response to the Ebola outbreaks in Guinea and the DRC.
The CDC Foundation said this funding will be used as part of CDC’s co-ordinated response with local public health authorities to conduct contact tracing, active case finding and investigation of Ebola cases and support essential transportation, facility improvements and communications to aid in the response to end these outbreaks.
– African News Agency (ANA); Editing by Yaron Blecher
