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Agence France-Presse

The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo showed no signs of easing Friday on the eve of the UN chief’s visit to the country, with the death toll from the highly contagious virus crossing 2,000 and a new fatality in neighbouring Uganda.
The latest casualty in Uganda was a nine-year-old girl from the Democratic Republic of Congo, reviving fears that the virus could cross the porous borders of the central African country, where it erupted in August last year.
DR Congo health officials said late on Thursday that there have been “2,006 deaths (1,901 confirmed and 105 probable)” since August 2018, adding that 902 people had been cured.
The toll is a setback coming a day before UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres visits for a first-hand assessment of the fightback.
Guterres wants to “express support for the teams engaged in the Ebola fightback,” the UN said.

More than 200,000 people have been vaccinated during DR Congo’s tenth and most serious Ebola epidemic.
It is the second-worst Ebola outbreak in history after more than 11,000 people were killed in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia between 2014 and 2016.
Containment efforts have been hindered by conflict in eastern DRC as well as attacks on Ebola fighters within affected communities.
Ebola ‘no longer incurable’ after discovery of new treatments
“For the moment, the situation is better than the past weeks. But in certain zones, there are many cases of community resistance. These are the zones which have brought forth the most confirmed cases,” said Robert Bahidika Nasekwa of Oxfam.
“As a result, those who came in contact with confirmed cases have not been followed up,” he said.
Jean-Edmond Bwanakawa Masumbuko, the mayor of Beni – a major city which Guteress is due to visit – said some people “had the tendency of viewing Ebola treatment centres as deathtraps”.

“Out of the city’s 14 zones, there are only four which continue to pose problems,” he said.
The nine-year-old girl who tested positive in Uganda after travelling from DR Congo died on Friday, a Ugandan health official said.
“She passed on at around 8am this morning,” said Yusuf Baseka, health director in Kasese, a district in southwestern Uganda along the border with DR Congo.
The child was diagnosed after exhibiting symptoms at a border crossing in Kasese on Wednesday.
She was isolated and transferred to an Ebola treatment unit.
The girl is the fourth victim diagnosed with Ebola in Uganda, which has been on high alert since last year, to have died from the virus.
In June, three members of a single family tested positive after entering from DR Congo. Two died in Uganda, while the third succumbed to the disease after returning to DR Congo.
The outbreak of the haemorrhagic virus began in the North Kivu province in eastern DR Congo on August 1, 2018, and spread to the neighbouring Ituri province.

The pathogen causes fever, vomiting and severe diarrhoea, often followed by kidney and liver failure, and internal and external bleeding.
The disease is spread by contact with infected bodily fluids and is fought with the time-honoured but laborious techniques of tracing contacts and quarantining them.
The WHO has declared the epidemic a “public health emergency of international concern”.
The virus has also spread to DR Congo’s South Kivu province, which shares a land border with Rwanda and Burundi.
Screening is vital, but imperfect.
Ebola can take up to three weeks to incubate and cannot be spread until the infected person has symptoms, the WHO says.
But it can be difficult to clinically tell Ebola from malaria, typhoid fever or meningitis.
Uganda has stepped up checks for hundreds of schoolchildren who cross over from DR Congo every day to attend school there as jobs and educational opportunities are greater.
But it is not without inconvenience.
“Sometimes we get to school late because we have to be in line for checking and it takes time,” said Doreane Kambari, a 16-year-old attending high school in Bwera in Kasese.


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Ebola virus

Outbreak fears worsen as Ebola death toll in DR Congo passes 2,000 ahead of UN chief’s assessment

Health workers equip themselves in protective equipment in Beni, North Kivu province. Photo: EPA-EFE

(FILES) In this file photo taken on July 16, 2019 in Goma, a woman gets her temperature measured at an Ebola screening station as she enters the Democratic Republic of the Congo from Rwanda. - DR Congo Ebola death toll crosses 2,000, officials said on August 30, 2019. (Photo by JOHN WESSELS / AFP)

School going pupils from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are seen crossing the Mpondwe border point separating Uganda and the DRC on August 14, 2019. - Every day at dawn, Doneka Kabowo, a Congolese teenager, walks miles into the jungle, with the threat of armed militiamen who roam the area, to go to school across the border in Uganda. But for some time now, another obstacle has developed for the 15-year-old and hundreds of schoolchildren who daily travel from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to Uganda to study: health checks for prevent the transmission of the Ebola virus. (Photo by ISAAC KASAMANI / AFP)

epa07803554 (FILE) - Health workers from Bwera hospital prepare to transport the body of a fifty-year-old woman who died of Ebola to the burial site in Bwera, a border town close to Democratic Republic of the Congo in western Uganda, 13 June 2019 (reissued 30 August 2019). According to officials, a girl from entering Uganda from DR Congo has been diagnosed with ebola by a screening team at Mpondwe border crossing. EPA-EFE/MELANIE ATUREEBE *** Local Caption *** 55270600

Ebola no longer ‘incurable’ after discovery of two highly effective treatments, scientists say

A health worker fills a syringe with Ebola vaccine in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo. Photo: Reuters

File-In this July 13, 2019 file photo, health workers wearing protective gear check on a patient isolated in a plastic cube at an Ebola treatment center in Beni, Congo. Health authorities in Congo have halted an Ebola treatment study early with good news: Two of the four experimental drugs seem to be saving lives. More than 1,800 people have died in the African country’s yearlong outbreak. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File)

FILE PHOTO: A child reacts as a health worker injects her with the Ebola vaccine, in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, August 5, 2019. REUTERS/Baz Ratner/File Photo

WHO declares Congo Ebola outbreak a global health emergency

An Ebola virus virion. Photo: AP

FILE PHOTO: A Ugandan health worker prepares to administer the Ebola vaccine to a man in Kirembo village, near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo in Kasese district, Uganda June 16, 2019. REUTERS/James Akena/File Photo

A woman gets her temperature measured at an Ebola screening station as she enters the Democratic Republic of the Congo from Rwanda on July 16, 2019 in Goma. - The first patient to be diagnosed with Ebola in the eastern DR Congo city of Goma has died, the governor of North Kivu province said on July 16, 2019. The case -- the first in a major urban hub in the region's nearly year-old epidemic of the disease -- has sparked deep concern in neighbouring Rwanda and at the UN. (Photo by JOHN WESSELS / AFP)

A health worker wearing Ebola protection gear at an Ebola treatment centre in Beni, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. File photo: Reuters

News

World

Africa


UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is due in the country to conduct a first-hand assessment of the efforts to combat the virus



UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is due in the country to conduct a first-hand assessment of the efforts to combat the virus.


Disease

United Nations

World Health Organization (WHO)

Outbreak fears worsen as Ebola death toll in DR Congo passes 2,000 ahead of UN chief’s assessment

.css-1mniedq{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;} UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is due in the country to conduct a first-hand assessment of the efforts to combat the virus

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is due in the country to conduct a first-hand assessment of the efforts to combat the virus