Dar es Salaam, June 1 (IANS) The East African Community (EAC) will convene an extraordinary virtual meeting of health ministers from June 1 to 2 to coordinate a regional response to the ongoing Ebola outbreak affecting parts of East Africa, the regional bloc has said in a statement. The meeting will focus on strategies to contain the outbreak caused by the rare Bundibugyo strain of the Ebola virus, for which there is currently no licensed vaccine or specific treatment, according to the statement…
Latest Ebola outbreak News & Updates
Kampala, May 31 (IANS) The Ugandan military said on Sunday that it would continue joint operations with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) against the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebel group despite the ongoing Ebola outbreak in the neighbouring country.Chris Magezi, acting spokesperson for the Uganda Peoples’ Defence Forces (UPDF), told Xinhua over the telephone that there had been no calls for an immediate halt to military operations, as the ADF continues to kill and abduct civilian…
Bunia, May 31 (IANS) World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called on countries that have imposed travel bans or closed borders in response to the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Uganda to reconsider such measures.Speaking at a joint press conference on Saturday in Bunia, the capital of the northeastern Ituri Province and the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak, Tedros said such restrictions could complicate response efforts and r…
Kinshasa, May 30 (IANS) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organisation (WHO), is visiting Congo amid the Ebola outbreak in the nation.”I had the opportunity to meet with Lieutenant-General Johnny Luboya Nkashama, the Governor of Ituri, which is currently the province in the Congo reporting the highest number of cases in the ongoing Ebola outbreak caused by the Bundibugyo virus,” Ghebreyesus wrote on X on Saturday.”During our discussions, we agreed that a key priori…
Rome, May 29 (IANS) Italy’s government is urging Europe to step up surveillance coordination at its borders to combat the spread of Ebola, Italy’s Prime Minister Georgia Meloni’s office said in a statement on Friday. Italy is sending a team of experts from Rome’s Spallanzani infectious diseases hospital to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) “as early as this weekend” to help combat the outbreak and strengthen monitoring and control of the virus, PM Meloni’s office added.”Italy believ…
Washington, May 28 (IANS) The Trump administration said on Thursday it has mobilised $112 million and established a quarantine facility in Kenya as part of a rapid response to a recent Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The American response was launched within 24 hours of receiving alerts about the outbreak and involves multiple federal agencies, a senior administration official told reporters here. The official added that the US has established a 50-bed quarantine facility in …
Kinshasa, May 27 (IANS) The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is still at the beginning of its latest Ebola outbreak and may need up to six months to contain it, health minister Roger Kamba has said. The number of people showing symptoms compatible with Ebola had risen to around 1,000, while 101 cases had been laboratory-confirmed, Kamba told a press briefing.He put probable deaths at about 220 till late Tuesday evening, with around 17 deaths confirmed by testing, and said about 3,600 conta…
Kinshasa, May 24 (IANS) The government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has temporarily suspended all passenger flights to and from Bunia, the capital of the northeastern Ituri Province that is the epicentre of the ongoing Ebola outbreak, the Ministry of Transport have said. An Ebola outbreak was declared in Ituri on May 15, with Bunia among the main affected areas. According to an official statement on Saturday (local time), no aircraft will be allowed to land at or take off from B…
Washington, May 20 (IANS) Pledging a major surge in assistance to contain a fast-moving Ebola outbreak in Central Africa, the Trump Administration sharply criticised the World Health Organization (WHO) for what American officials described as a delayed global alert that may have cost critical response time.Senior US officials said Washington had already committed about $23 million in bilateral humanitarian and health assistance and was preparing a much larger package to fund up to 50 Ebola treat…