Topline
The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday warned 11 African countries are now considered to be at risk amid an ongoing Ebola outbreak and World Health Organization officials called for international cooperation, cautioning “no single country can respond to this magnitude of outbreak alone.”
Timeline
At a meeting of health leaders from across the continent, Africa CDC Director General Dr. Jean Kaseya warned, “This is too much. We cannot afford to have more Africans dying.”
WHO director general Tedros Ghebreyesus, who says he will personally travel to Congo on Tuesday, says the Ebola death toll has risen to 220 and warns “at the moment, the epidemic is outpacing us.”
A group of young men stormed a hospital treating Ebola patients in DCR and opened fire while attempting to reclaim the bodies of loved ones, according to the Associated Press, marking the third attack on Ebola treatment facilities in four days (it was not immediately clear if anyone was hurt).
Unidentified attackers burn down a tent being used to treat Ebola victims in Mongbwalu, a town in the DRC’s Ituri Province, and at least 18 people with suspected cases of Ebola fled during the attack.
Witnesses tell AP that a treatment center and the body of a person inside were set on fire by locals who became angry when they weren’t allowed to retrieve the body of a friend who’d died (contact with the body of an Ebola victim is an easy way for the disease to spread, and authorities are handling burials whenever possible in the region).
An Air France flight headed for Detroit is diverted to Montreal after border patrol agents in France mistakenly allowed a passenger to board the flight in violation of new travel rules barring U.S. entry to non-citizens who have been in Uganda, DCR or South Sudan in the last 21 days.
President Donald Trump says he is “concerned” about Ebola when asked about the outbreak at the White House, but the CDC says the ongoing risk to the American public is “low.”
The CDC and the Department of Homeland Security announce new travel restrictions related to the Ebola outbreak, including enhanced public health screening for people arriving from affected areas and entry restrictions for non-U.S. passport holders who have been in Uganda, the Congo or South Sudan in the last 21 days.
Citing unnamed sources, Stat News reports several Americans had “high-risk exposures” to Ebola while working in the Congo and says one has developed symptoms consistent with the disease.
The Africa CDC confirms an Ebola outbreak in the Ituri province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and laboratory tests confirm the outbreak is of the Bundibugyo strain, for which there is no vaccine.
Key Background
When the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention reported the disease outbreak, it had already sickened 246 people and killed 65. The World Health Organization immediately declared the outbreak an “extraordinary event” that could pose a public health risk to multiple nations, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said several Americans had been exposed while working in the region. Those include Dr. Peter Stafford, an American missionary who contracted Ebola while working in Congo and is now receiving treatment at a specialist hospital in Germany, and another American doctor who was also exposed and flown to Bulovka Hospital in Prague for care. Several other Americans were also evacuated from the area for treatment or monitoring. Within days of the initial declaration of an outbreak, the first death from a patient outside of Congo was reported in Uganda and Ghebreyesus said he was “deeply concerned by the scale and the speed of the epidemic.” There have since been five Ebola cases reported in Uganda, including a Ugandan driver who transported the country’s first victim, a Ugandan healthcare worker who treated the first victim, and a Congolese woman who entered Uganda with symptoms.
How Is Ebola Treated?
Most previous outbreaks were of Ebola-Zaire strains of the virus, for which public health officials have approved vaccines, but the Bundibugyo strain spreading now has no approved vaccine or treatment method. The only way to help those infected is to provide supportive care, health officials say, like giving medicine to support blood pressure, reduce vomiting and diarrhea, and manage fever and pain. A 2007 outbreak of Bundibugyo had a 32% fatality rate, similar to untreated cases of smallpox and typhoid fever.
Big Number
17. That’s how many Ebola outbreaks have happened in the DRC over the last 50 years
Surprising Fact
The last time Ebola was in the United States was in 2014, during a global outbreak that saw 11 cases in the country. Of those, nine people contracted the virus in West Africa and were later transported to the U.S. for specialized medical treatment. Two people died. The other two cases were identified in nurses who contracted Ebola in the United States after treating a patient in Dallas. They both survived.
Tangent
The Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, established by the WHO and World Bank, on Monday warned the world isn’t ready for another pandemic despite what was learned during the COVID outbreak six years ago. In a new report, the board said global health research, prevention and preparedness has not kept pace with an increasing frequency and intensity of infectious disease epidemics and warned any pandemic will “strike a world more divided, more indebted and less able to protect its people than it was a decade ago.
