DRC plans surveillance, vaccination training to tackle Ebola

Democratic Republic of Congo has been scaled up its fight against Ebola in country after World Health Organization (WHO), the global health body sounded an alarm over its outbreak. WHO declared disease an international health emergency after a Ebola case was confirmed in Goma, a densely populated eastern city that borders Rwanda.

Key Highlights

The discovery of Ebola case in Goma was triggering point for WHO against declaring the outbreak a global emergency as it signaled a change- inside Goma lies an international airport, which some health experts described as gateway to rest of the world.

As per WHOs’ Emergency Operations reporting over the course of these outbreak, people traveling from Goma, including across border into Rwanda, everyone’s being checked. Congolese supported by international committees have tested over 70 million travelers.

Strategy: As a team led by veteran Ebola researcher Jean-Jacques Muyembe, first thing is to train young people of decision (the strategy) so they would be in charge of vaccination, of surveillance and then involve population of Benin, of Mangina, to follow the strategy we will implement there.

International Community and DRC government have come up with a program aimed at strengthening response to Ebola outbreak over next 6 months, however they are calling on world to contribute more money to help contain deadly disease that has killed more than 1,700 people since August 2018.

Month: Current Affairs - July, 2019