WHO: Ebola Response Grows More Complex as Outbreak Spreads From DR Congo, Kenya and Nigeria Trace Contacts
The World Health Organization (WHO) said the response to an Ebola outbreak that began in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is becoming more complex as cases spread to countries in East and West Africa. The outbreak is caused by the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola. Kenya, DR Congo, and Nigeria have current or recent cases; Uganda also recorded cases earlier this year but has since been declared Ebola-free.
In Kenya, the Ministry of Health reported eight additional cases after confirming its first case this month. Patrick Amoth, the ministry's director-general, said officials had traced all 135 contacts of the first patient. In Nigeria, authorities are tracing 44 contacts. Wessam Mankoula, head of Emergency Preparedness and Response at the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, said the first patients in Nigeria and Kenya both left Entebbe, Uganda, on October 3, that a possible encounter between them was under investigation, and that there was no validated information that the Nigerian patient had visited DR Congo. Pavel Ursu, the WHO representative in Nigeria, said the information provided to the organization included no travel outside Uganda for that patient.
Patrick Otim, a WHO emergency response manager, said the source of the patient's infection remained unknown and that health authorities were piecing together her travel history. With cases appearing in several countries and the chains of infection still unclear, the WHO and Africa CDC are working with national health authorities on contact tracing and outbreak investigation. Ebola virus disease spreads through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person; the 2014-2016 outbreak in West Africa killed more than 11,000 people.
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：埃博拉治疗单元内景（资料图）。照片：CDC Global，CC BY 2.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Inside an Ebola treatment unit (file photo). Photo: CDC Global, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
