The deadly Ebola disease has now been recorded in a new city in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The city of Bunia is the latest to report the Ebola infection. It has a population of nearly one million. Bunia is the second-largest city in eastern DR Congo.
Congo’s health ministry on Wednesday said that the person carrying the virus is a six-month-old baby.
The baby’s parents are however in “good health” according to officials.
Health officials are now investigating how the baby got infected while the parents are in good health.
Meanwhile the country continues to struggle to contain the spread of the disease. Ongoing conflicts have played a major role in rolling back progress.
Global emergency
Last month, a group of international public health experts urged the World Health Organization to declare an Ebola emergency in the Congo.
It wanted the W.H.O to consider Congo’s Ebola outbreak an international public health emergency.
The experts wrote in the Lancet that such a move should help put together “high-level political, financial, and technical support to address the Ebola outbreak that started last May”.
Lead author Lawrence Gostin, from Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law said “The epidemic is not under control, and has a high risk of spread to the region, perhaps globally.”
“Taking bold measures to prevent the spread of the disease in this country where violence is prevalent, and a famine is predicted, is critical to preventing a humanitarian disaster,” Gostin said.
The World Health Organization says the current Ebola outbreak in the DR Congo is getting out of control.
The global body has said that the outbreak is “now second largest historically. A sad toll, with too many families losing loved ones.”
Ebola leads to internal and external bleeding which can cause damage done to blood vessels.
The DR Congo outbreak only comes second to the outbreak recorded in West Africa. That outbreak was between 2013 and 2016 killing over 11,000 people.
The Ebola virus is transmitted by bats. It was named after the Ebola River when it was detected in DRC.
Source: Africafeeds.com
