The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DR Congo) latest Ebola outbreak is the worst in the country’s recorded history, with 319 confirmed and probable cases, the DR Congo Ministry of Health said.
The deadly virus has killed about 198 people since the outbreak was declared on Aug. 1 in the volatile east, the ministry said.
Those dead include 163 confirmed Ebola cases, with 35 probable deaths. Nearly 100 people have survived Ebola.
This is the DR Congo’s 10th outbreak since 1976, when the hemorrhagic fever was first identified in Yambuku, Equateur Province, the ministry said.
Congolese Minister of Health Oly Ilunga Kalenga late on Friday said that the figures now exceed that outbreak.
“No other epidemic in the world has been as complex as the one we are currently experiencing,” Ilunga said. “Since their arrival in the region, the response teams have faced threats, physical assaults, repeated destruction of their equipment, and kidnapping. Two of our colleagues in the Rapid Response Medical Unit even lost their lives in an attack.”
Armed groups vying for control of the DR Congo’s mineral-rich east have staged regular attacks in the country’s Ituri and North Kivu provinces, complicating the response by health officials, who have also been meeting community resistance.
However, health officials have managed to vaccinate more than 27,000 high-risk contacts, of which at least half could have developed Ebola, Ilunga said.
“This epidemic remains dangerous and unpredictable, and we must not let our guard down. We must continue to pursue a very dynamic response that requires permanent readjustments and real ownership at the community level,” he said.
The head of UN peacekeeping operations last week vowed to do more with Congo’s government to help improve security in the country’s east.
This is the first time an Ebola outbreak has occurred in the DR Congo’s far northeast.
The health ministry has said that teams responding to the outbreak are attacked three to four times a week on average, a level of violence unseen during the country’s nine previous outbreaks of the virus.
Ebola is spread via the body fluids of infected people, including the dead.
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
RSS