World Health Organization confirmed 105 potential cases in Ebola outbreak centered in North Kivu province of Congo.
This latest Ebola outbreak, Congo’s 10th, was announced just a week after a smaller one was dealt in another part of the country.
Ebola in Congo:
An outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo(DRC) has reached a crucial moment and now endangers medical teams are fighting to stop the disease from spreading. The count is double of the first outbreak in Congo that made headlines this spring.
From Tuesday to Friday, an approximation of 19,000 people stream down the hill from Congo’s North Kivu province to cross the border into Uganda. However, Uganda is determined to keep the deadly disease from spreading to its side. People are allowed through only after they disinfect their shoes with chlorinated water. People’s body temperatures are also taken with no-touch thermometer guns.
According to the director of U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Robert Redfield, the outbreak in North Kivu is responsible for 105 confirmed or suspected cases, including 67 deaths.
It comes four years after the disease’s outbreak in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia which resulted in the deaths of more than 11,000 people, sickened more than 28,000 and spread panic among people about traveling in other parts of the world.
The current outbreak is still escalating, according to Redfield and workers at nongovernmental organizations have rushed in to treat victims and interrupt the spread of the disease.
West African outbreak
In March 2014, the World Health Organization(WHO) reported a major Ebola hemorrhagic fever outbreak in Guinea, a West African country. The disease quickly outspread to the neighboring countries of Sierra Leone and Liberia resulting in 11,310 deaths and 28,616 infected.
What is Ebola?
Ebola virus disease (EVD), also known called Ebola hemorrhagic fever (EHF) or Ebola, is a viral hemorrhagic fever of humans and other primates caused by ebolaviruses. Infected start showing signs and symptoms typically between two days and three weeks. Symptoms include a sore throat, fever, headaches, rashes, diarrhea, vomiting, muscular pains along with the decreased function of the kidneys and liver. Some people begin to bleed both externally and internally. Ebola has a high risk of death, almost between 25 to 90 percent, with an average of about 50 percent which is often due to low blood pressure from fluid loss.
The virus spreads through direct contact with body fluids, such as blood from infected humans or animals.
The disease was first identified in 1976. Ebola vaccines have been developed a decade prior to 2014 but none have yet been approved for humans.
Read Also:
