The WHO yesterday declared an international health emergency over an outbreak of an Ebola strain in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) that has killed more than 80 and for which there is no vaccine.
Fears of further spread grew when a laboratory yesterday confirmed a case in the major eastern DR Congo city of Goma.
A total of 88 deaths and 336 suspected cases of the highly contagious haemorrhagic fever have so far been reported, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said on Saturday.
Photo: AFP
“A positive case in Goma has been confirmed by tests carried out by the laboratory. It involves the wife of a man who died of Ebola in Bunia, who traveled to Goma after her husband’s death whilst already infected,” Congolese National Institute for Biomedical Research Director Jean-Jacques Muyembe said.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on X wrote that “the epidemic constitutes a public health emergency of international concern,” but added that it does not yet meet the criteria of pandemic emergency.
The WHO has declared its second-highest level of alert and warned that the scale of the current outbreak remains unclear.
“The Bundibugyo strain has no vaccine, no specific treatment,” Congolese Minister of Health Samuel-Roger Kamba said. “This strain has a very high fatality rate, which can reach 50 percent.”
Patient zero was a nurse who reported to a health facility in Ituri’s provincial capital Bunia on April 24, with symptoms suggesting Ebola, Kamba said.
The WHO said the high positivity rate of initial samples, the confirmation of cases in two countries, and the increasing reports of suspected cases “all point towards a potentially much larger outbreak than what is currently being detected and reported, with significant local and regional risk of spread.”
The virus spreads from person to person through bodily fluids or exposure to the blood of an infected persons, who become contagious only once they display symptoms, which include fever, hemorrhaging and vomiting. The incubation period can last up to 21 days.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
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