{"id":11594,"date":"2018-08-15T10:27:08","date_gmt":"2018-08-15T10:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=11594"},"modified":"2018-08-15T10:27:08","modified_gmt":"2018-08-15T10:27:08","slug":"who-says-drc-conflict-hindering-push-to-stem-ebola-outbreak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=11594","title":{"rendered":"WHO says DRC conflict hindering push to stem Ebola outbreak"},"content":{"rendered":"<div readability=\"32\">\n<h4 class=\"branded-underline-title embeded-box-name\">Latest numbers as of August 12, 2018<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li>Confirmed cases: 30<\/li>\n<li>Probable cases: 27<\/li>\n<li>Total cases: 57<\/li>\n<li>Deaths: 41 [14 confirmed, 27 probable]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Source: World Health Organization\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"body-200771816342556199\" readability=\"132.327069028\">\n<p class=\"speakable\">Internal conflict is hampering efforts to rein in an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/subjects\/ebola.html\">Ebola outbreak<\/a> in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the WHO has warned, urging a ceasefire to stop the virus from spreading.<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\">The death toll from the latest outbreak rose to 41 people by August 1 in DRC&#8217;s North Kivu province.<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\"><span>Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the<\/span>\u00a0World Health Organization chief, has called for the rapid roll-out of an unlicenced drug being used for the first time to treat Ebola patients. <\/p>\n<p>Ghebreyesus told reporters on Tuesday he feared conditions on the ground in the eastern province had created &#8220;a conducive environment for the transmission of Ebola.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>The outbreak in North Kivu&#8217;s Beni region, which shares borders with Uganda and Rwanda, was declared a week after WHO and the Kinshasa government hailed the end of an Ebola flareup in northwestern Equateur province, which killed 33 people. <\/p>\n<p>The latest outbreak, which now counts 57 probable and confirmed cases, is the country&#8217;s 10th since 1976, when the disease was first identified in the DRC near the Ebola River.<\/p>\n<h2><!-- PAGELOADEDSUCCESSFULLY--><\/h2>\n<p>DRC health authorities said Tuesday that for the first time since the outbreak was announced, one fatality was recorded outside of North Kivu &#8211; in the neighbouring province of Ituri. <\/p>\n<p>The new outbreak poses the same problems as past cases in the DRC, including logistical hurdles in a country with weak health infrastructure.<\/p>\n<p>But in North Kivu, health workers are being forced to navigate their response among more than 100 armed groups<\/p>\n<p><span>Ghebreyesus<\/span>\u00a0said that there have been 120 violent incidents since January.<\/p>\n<p>He said the region was sprinkled with so-called &#8220;red zones&#8221;, or inaccessible areas. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;That environment is really conducive for Ebola &#8230; to transmit freely.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We call on the warring parties for cessation of hostilities, because the virus is dangerous to all. It doesn&#8217;t choose between this group or that group,&#8221; he said. <\/p>\n<p>Ebola causes serious illness including vomiting, diarrhoea and in some cases internal and external bleeding. It is often fatal if untreated.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"imagecontainer item\" data-image-url=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/mritems\/Images\/2018\/5\/20\/8dbb12a55be443fa8414ecdf840604d2_6.jpg\">\n<table class=\"image\" border=\"0\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/mritems\/Images\/2018\/5\/20\/8dbb12a55be443fa8414ecdf840604d2_6.jpg\" border=\"0\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td class=\"caption\">\u00a0<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>In a bid to halt the virus&#8217; advance, DRC health authorities said Tuesday that doctors in Beni had begun using a prototype drug called mAb114 to treat patients.<\/p>\n<p>Developed in the US, the prototype drug is a protein that binds on to a specific target of the virus and triggers the body&#8217;s immune system.<\/p>\n<p>In May, the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) said it was carrying out the first human trials of mAb114 to test it for safety and tolerance.<\/p>\n<p><span>Ghebreyesus<\/span>\u00a0said five patients had received the unlicenced drug so far, and that WHO would like the roll-out &#8220;to speed up as much as possible&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Targeted vaccination, aimed primarily at frontline health workers, began last week, and so far 216 people have received a jab.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div readability=\"32\">\n<p>\n            SOURCE: <span>Al Jazeera and news agencies<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Latest numbers as of August 12, 2018 Confirmed cases: 30 Probable cases: 27 Total cases: 57 Deaths: 41 [14 confirmed, 27 probable] Source: World Health Organization\u00a0 Internal conflict is hampering efforts to rein in an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the WHO has warned, urging a ceasefire to stop the virus from&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":11595,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}