Centres open for rare Ebola strain that killed nearly 120

SHKINASA (AP):

Congo will open three Ebola treatment centres in the eastern Ituri province, and the World Health Organization is sending a team of experts to the country, following an outbreak of a rare type of the virus that has killed nearly 120 people.

An American doctor in Congo is among the newly confirmed cases of the virus with no approved vaccines or medicines, Congolese officials said yesterday, as details emerged about the government’s delayed response to the outbreak.

The WHO on Sunday declared the Ebola outbreak a public health emergency of international concern. As of yesterday, there were over 118 deaths and 300 suspected cases in Ituri and North Kivu provinces, and one death and one suspected case in neighbouring Uganda. Experts say the number of cases is likely to rise as health officials conduct more surveillance.

The Bundibugyo virus spread undetected for at least a few weeks, health experts and aid workers said. Cases have now been confirmed in Bunia, North Kivu’s rebel-held capital of Goma, Mongbwalu, Butembo and Nyakunde.

“Because early tests looked for the wrong strain of Ebola, we got false negatives and lost weeks of response time,” said Matthew M. Kavanagh, director of the Georgetown University Centre for Global Health Policy and Politics. “We are playing catch-up against a very dangerous pathogen.”

He criticised the Trump administration’s earlier decision to withdraw from the WHO and make deep cuts in foreign aid — “the exact surveillance system meant to catch these viruses early,” he said.

The severity of the symptoms and the rising caseload are fuelling a growing sense of panic in the neighbourhoods of Bunia.

“I know the consequences of Ebola, I know what it’s like,” said Noëla Lumo, a resident of Bunia. She previously lived in Beni, a region hit by former Ebola outbreaks. As soon as she heard about the latest outbreak, Lumo began making protective masks by hand.

Congo has said the first person died from the virus on April 24 in Bunia, and the body was repatriated to the Mongbwalu health zone, a mining area with a large population.

“That caused the Ebola outbreak to escalate,” said Congo’s health minister, Samuel Roger Kamba.

When another person fell ill on April 26, samples were sent to Kinshasa for testing, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control. On May 5, the WHO was alerted of about 50 deaths in Mongbwalu, including four health workers. The first case was confirmed on May 14.

Samples from Bunia were initially tested for the more common type of Ebola, Zaire, Congolese officials said. They came back negative, said Dr Richard Kitenge, the Health Ministry Incident Manager for Ebola.

The first confirmation of Ebola came on May 14, and Bundibugyo was confirmed the next day.

“The situation is quite worrying and is evolving pretty quickly,” Esther Sterk with the Medecins Sans Frontieres aid group told the AP. “It was detected quite late.” But she said that was often the case with outbreaks of Ebola, which has similar symptoms to other tropical diseases.

Ebola is highly contagious and can be contracted via bodily fluids such as vomit, blood or semen. The disease it causes is rare but severe and often fatal.

“Ebola is very much a disease of compassion in that it impacts the people who are more likely to be taking care of sick folks,” said Dr Craig Spencer, an associate professor at the Brown University School of Public Health who survived Ebola more than a decade ago after contracting the disease in Guinea.

⁠“I suspect that the number of cases is going to go up pretty dramatically in the coming weeks as we do better surveillance and end up finding there were a lot more cases and probably a lot more deaths than we recognised,” he said.

Although more than 20 Ebola outbreaks have taken place in Congo and Uganda since 1976, this is only the third time that the Bundibugyo virus has been detected.

The US CDC says it causes fever, headache, muscle pain, weakness, diarrhoea, vomiting, stomach pain and unexplained bleeding or bruising.