{"id":49534,"date":"2020-06-26T12:00:09","date_gmt":"2020-06-26T10:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/central-africa\/dr-congo\/10th-ebola-outbreak-in-the-democratic-republic-of-the-congo-declared-over-vigilance-against-flare-ups-and-support-for-survivors-must-continue\/"},"modified":"2020-06-26T12:00:10","modified_gmt":"2020-06-26T10:00:10","slug":"10th-ebola-outbreak-in-the-democratic-republic-of-the-congo-declared-over-vigilance-against-flare-ups-and-support-for-survivors-must-continue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/central-africa\/dr-congo\/10th-ebola-outbreak-in-the-democratic-republic-of-the-congo-declared-over-vigilance-against-flare-ups-and-support-for-survivors-must-continue\/","title":{"rendered":"10th Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo declared over; vigilance against flare-ups and support for survivors must continue"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Today marks the end of the 10th outbreak of Ebola virus disease in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). This long, complex and difficult outbreak has been overcome due to the leadership and commitment of the Government of the DRC, supported by the World Health Organization (WHO), a multitude of partners, donors, and above all, the efforts of the communities affected by the virus.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

WHO congratulates all those involved in the arduous and often dangerous work required to end the outbreak, but stresses the need for vigilance. Continuing to support survivors and maintaining strong surveillance and response systems in order to contain potential flare-ups is critical in the months to come.<\/p>\n

“The outbreak took so much from all of us, especially from the people of DRC, but we came out of it with valuable lessons, and valuable tools. The world is now better-equipped to respond to Ebola. A vaccine has been licensed, and effective treatments identified,\u201d said WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe should celebrate this moment, but we must resist complacency. Viruses do not take breaks. Ultimately, the best defence against any outbreak is investing in a stronger health system as the foundation for universal health coverage.\u201d<\/p>\n

The outbreak, declared in North Kivu on 1 August 2018, was the second largest in the world, and was particularly challenging as it took place an active conflict zone.\u00a0There were 3470 cases, 2287\u00a0deaths and 1171\u00a0survivors.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Led by the DRC Government and the Ministry of Health and supported by WHO and partners, the more than 22-month-long response involved training thousands of health workers, registering 250\u00a0000 contacts, testing 220\u00a0000 samples, providing patients with equitable access to advanced therapeutics, vaccinating over 303\u00a0000 people with the highly effective rVSV-ZEBOV-GP vaccine, and offering care for all survivors after their recovery.<\/p>\n

The response was bolstered by the engagement and leadership of the affected communities.\u00a0Thanks to their\u00a0efforts,\u00a0this outbreak did\u00a0not spread globally. More than\u00a016 000 local frontline responders worked\u00a0alongside\u00a0the more than 1500 people deployed by\u00a0WHO. Support from\u00a0donors<\/a>\u00a0was essential, as was the work of UN partner agencies, national and international NGOs, research networks, and partners deployed through the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network. Hard work to build up\u00a0preparedness capacities in neighbouring\u00a0countries\u00a0also limited\u00a0the risk of the outbreak expanding.<\/p>\n

Work will continue to build on the gains made in this response to address other health challenges, including measles and COVID-19.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring the almost two years we fought the Ebola virus, WHO and partners helped strengthen the capacity of local health authorities to manage outbreaks,\u201d said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe DRC is now better, smarter and faster at responding to Ebola and this is an enduring legacy which is supporting the response to COVID-19 and other outbreaks.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

As countries around the world face the COVID-19 pandemic, the DRC Ebola response provides valuable lessons. Many of the public health measures that have been successful in stopping Ebola are the same measures that are now essential for stopping COVID-19:\u00a0finding, isolating, testing, and caring for every case and relentless contact tracing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In DRC, community workers were provided with training and a smartphone\u00a0data collection app<\/a>\u00a0that enabled them to track contacts and report in real time rather than fill in laborious paper reports. Even when violence locked down cities, the community workers, many of them local women, continued to track and trace contacts using the application, something that was crucial for ending this outbreak.<\/p>\n

While this 10th outbreak in DRC has ended, the fight against Ebola continues. On 1 June 2020, seven cases of Ebola were reported in Mbandaka city and neighbouring Bikoro Health Zone in Equateur Province and\u00a0an 11th outbreak was declared<\/a>.\u00a0WHO is supporting the government-led response with more than 50 staff already deployed and more than 5000 vaccinations already administered.<\/p>\n

WHO salutes the thousands of heroic responders who fought one of the world\u2019s most dangerous viruses in one of the world\u2019s most unstable regions.\u00a0Some health workers, including WHO experts,\u00a0paid the ultimate price and sacrificed their lives to the Ebola response.<\/p>\n

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of World Health Organization (WHO).<\/i>
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South Africa Today Africa \u2013 Central Africa Democratic Republic of Congo<\/a> News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Download logo Today marks the end of the 10th outbreak of Ebola virus disease in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). This long, complex and difficult outbreak has been overcome due to the leadership and commitment of the Government of the DRC, supported by the World Health Organization (WHO), a multitude of partners, donors, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":188473,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[278],"tags":[21471,258,256,4696,4554,8005,6583,6404,281,4691,450,279,280,1111,34549,257,6582,5935,254,6096,6040,15452],"class_list":["post-49534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dr-congo","tag-10th","tag-africa","tag-africa-news","tag-central-africa","tag-congo","tag-continue","tag-declared","tag-democratic","tag-democratic-republic-of-congo","tag-dr-congo","tag-dr-congo-news","tag-drc","tag-drc-news","tag-ebola","tag-flareups","tag-news","tag-outbreak","tag-republic","tag-south-africa-today","tag-support","tag-survivors","tag-vigilance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}