400 People Being Monitored For Ebola in DRC
The World Health Organisation has said that health workers in the Democratic Republic of Congo are monitoring at least 400 people for possible traces of Ebola.
WHO confirmed earlier in the week that the northern parts of the DRC are in the midst of a new Ebola outbreak which has already claimed the lives of three people and infected several others.
The deaths were all connected to one another. A man who was infected with the virus died before he could reach the hospital. Subsequently, a motorcyclist who had transported him and a caregiver who was looking after him both died.
The outbreak in DRC is mostly confined to the Likati area, 1400 kilometers from the capital of Kinshasa.
,Health workers are currently being transported to the various areas to set up a mobile testing laboratory and to treat those infected.
WHO has also said that there is an experimental Ebola vaccine available that they could give the people affected in DRC. However, they would need permission from the government to use the vaccine because as it has not yet been cleared for official use.
Should the DRC government give the green light for the experimental vaccine, WHO would ship it to a remote area, and then start to administer the drug to the 400 people they are currently monitoring.
The DRC has had many outbreaks of Ebola in the past, most recently being the epidemic in 2014 that ravaged several west African countries and left more than 11 000 people dead.
