The World Health Organization (WHO) has called on six African countries to be warned of possible Ebola infections, as Guinea on Tuesday reported new cases and the Democratic Republic of Congo said the new diseases were they are a revival of a previous revolution.
Guinea officially announced an outbreak of the virus on Sunday in the first outbreak of the disease in the region since the 2013-2016 uprising, while Congo has confirmed four new cases in the month seo.
Health authorities are in a hurry to respond to the issues in Guinea. They want to stop the last uprising again, which was the deadliest Ebola infection on record that erupted through West Africa between 2013 and 2016 killing more than 11,300 people , mostly in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. Unlike the most deadly known revolution, Guinea had a way to halt the resurgence of the virus, Health Minister Remy Lamah said.
“In 2013, it took us months to realize that we were dealing with Ebola infection, and this time, in less than four days, we were able to analyze and get the results .Our medical teams are trained and seasoned in. We have the means to overcome this disease quickly, “Lamah told Reuters.
The new uprising began after the funeral of a nurse buried in southeastern Guinea on February 1. She is believed to have contracted Ebola and several people who attended her funeral have been positive for the virus, authorities said. Since then, Guinea has identified 115 notifications of known cases in the southeastern city of Nzerekore and 10 in the capital Conakry, while five have died from the virus, the health ministry said .
“We have already issued a warning to the six surrounding countries, including Sierra Leone and Liberia of course, and they are moving very quickly to prepare and be ready and watch for any possible disease, “Margaret Harris of the WHO told a briefing in Geneva on Tuesday.
WHO representative in Guinea, Georges Ki-Zerbo, said he has applied for permission to receive the same number of vaccine doses.
He said there were restrictions on getting the vaccines to Guinea quickly, but authorities were working on the issues so that the vaccines would be available before next week for a targeted vaccination campaign.
Meanwhile, an Ebola vaccination campaign has begun in the city of Butembo, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Twitter on Feb. 15, with health workers at Matanda health center, where the first Ebola patient was treated, as the first vaccine.
On Friday, 1,200 doses of the Ebola vaccine and cold chain equipment arrived in the city, according to the WHO.
International organizations, including the International Committee of the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and the medical charity ALIMA, said they were sending rapid response teams to the area to help.
Gene sequences of Ebola samples from both Congo and Guinea are being made to learn more about the origins of the uprising and identify the rays, according to the WHO.
As a result, Congo has confirmed that their latest cases were not related to a new Ebola outbreak but represented a resurgence of its 10th revolution, the second largest recorded to date. caused more than 2,200 deaths in 2018-2020, which was announced to be over in June 2020. The country suffered another revolution in 2020, which was announced to end in November.
“As for the disease, we still can’t identify where it came from,” said the Minister of Health of the department Eugene Nzanzu Salita, referring to how the first person caught ill in this resuscitation the virus.
Since epilepsy in West Africa, the development of vaccines and treatments has significantly improved survival rates and restraint efforts.
Further spread of the disease could damage the underlying health systems of the regions, which also fight the COVID-19 pandemic. Neighbors Ivory Coast, Mali and Sierra Leone said on Monday that they have launched plans to halt any possible evacuation and reinforce border controls.
The Biden administration in the U.S. said on February 16 that everything must be done to stop the Ebola outbreak in the African countries of Guinea and the Democratic Republic of the Congo before they become major diseases.
“We can’t get our feet off the gas – even when we fight COVID, we need to secure capacity and funding for health security around the world,” White House news secretary Jen Psaki, in recitation.
U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan on Tuesday spoke with Guinean and Congo ambassadors as well as Guinea’s neighbors Sierra Leone and Liberia for U.S. willingness to provide assistance, according to Psaki.
The Ebola virus can cause severe organ intolerance and failure and is spread through contact with body fluids. Mortality rate is much higher than COVID-19, but unlike the coronavirus, it is not triggered by asymptomatic carriers.