Tag: Ebola

Mourners gather as Liberia approaches decade since Ebola outbreak

Dozens of mourners gathered to clear graves at Liberia’s largest Ebola burial site on Wednesday, as the country approached 10 years since the virus first swept through the population. The West African nation was badly hit by the region’s Ebola pandemic, which raged from 2014 to 2016 and killed 4,810 people in Liberia alone. The country’s first cases were confirmed on March 30, 2014, according to the World Health Organization. “It is very hard for […]

Uganda set to declare end of Ebola outbreak

  Kampala, Uganda (AFP) Uganda said on Monday it was expecting to declare an end to an Ebola virus outbreak that emerged late last year and has claimed the lives of at least 56 people. If no new case is reported by Tuesday, the health ministry said it would formally announce the end of the outbreak on Wednesday. According to the World Health Organization, an outbreak of the disease ends when there are no new […]

Ebola trial vaccines heading to Uganda: WHO

GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) – Three candidate vaccines against the strain of Ebola wreaking havoc in Uganda will be shipped to the East African country next week for trials, the World Health Organization said Wednesday. Since Uganda declared an Ebola outbreak on September 20, cases have spread across the country, including to the capital Kampala, and have claimed 55 lives, with 22 more believed to have died. Uganda has been struggling to rein in the outbreak caused […]

Residents on edge as Uganda reports Ebola cases in Kampala

  Kampala, Uganda | AFP | by Grace Matsiko Uganda has reported 14 confirmed cases of Ebola in the greater Kampala region, the country’s health minister said Monday, but sought to assure anxious residents that the situation in the capital was under control. So far, the death toll across the country from the Ebola epidemic declared in late September has climbed to 44, according to World Health Organisation figures issued last week. Uganda’s health ministry […]

Covid-19 compared with other deadly viruses

  by Olivier THIBAULT Agence France Presse The global death toll from Covid-19, which is set to pass five million, is already far worse than most other viral epidemics of the 20th and 21st centuries. But there have been notable exceptions. The post-World War I Spanish Flu wiped out more than 50 million people in 1918-19, according to some estimates. That is far more than the coronavirus pandemic, even if — as the World Health […]

DRCongo starts Ebola vaccinations in east of country

BENI, DR Congo (AFP) — Vaccination against the deadly Ebola disease began on Wednesday in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s eastern city of Beni, the WHO said, five days after reports of a new case. The fresh case was reported in North Kivu, the same province where the vaccination program began. “People at high risk, including contacts of the confirmed case and first responders will receive the doses as the health authorities move to curb […]

‘Ebola is defeated’, says Congolese professor who discovered virus

KINSHASA, DR Congo (AFP) — Ebola has been defeated. Vaccines and medical treatments have brought the deadly and terrifying disease under control, says Jean-Jacques Muyembe, the Congolese professor who first discovered the virus more than 40 years ago. The 79-year-old virologist was speaking at a ceremony in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s capital Kinshasa marking the arrival on the market of the “Ebanga” treatment, which was approved last December by the US Food and Drug […]

Ebola virus in survivors can trigger outbreaks years after infection

by Sara HUSSEIN TOKYO, Japan (AFP) — Ebola survivors can relapse and trigger outbreaks at least five years after infection, and long-term follow-up of former patients is needed to prevent devastating flare-ups, according to new research. Scientists already knew Ebola could lie dormant in survivors, who test negative because the virus is in tissue rather than circulating in the blood. But analysis of an outbreak this year in Guinea, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, […]

‘No evidence’ woman in Ivory Coast had Ebola: WHO

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AFP) — There is “no evidence” that a Guinean woman who tested positive for Ebola after arriving in neighbouring Ivory Coast had the disease, the WHO said on Tuesday citing a new analysis from a lab in France. Her diagnosis in mid-August was thought to be the first confirmed case of Ebola in the west African country since 1994. The diagnoses sparked a huge contact-tracing operation by the World Health Organization and […]

Ivory Coast says first Ebola patient since 1994 has recovered

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AFP) — A young Guinean woman who tested positive for the Ebola virus in Ivory Coast after arriving there two weeks ago has recovered from the disease, the Ivorian health ministry said Tuesday. “We performed on the patient two biological tests which were negative in an interval of 48 hours. She is therefore declared cured,” Serge Eholie, ministry spokesman and head of the country’s infectious diseases department told AFP. “We are lifting […]

Suspected second case of Ebola in Ivory Coast

GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) — The UN health agency said Tuesday that a second suspected case of infection by the deadly Ebola virus had been detected in Ivory Coast. World Health Organization (WHO) spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said that as of Monday, there had been one confirmed and one suspected case, with nine contacts identified so far. No deaths have been reported. He said the WHO was “very concerned” about the ability of the virus to spread […]

Ivory Coast starts Ebola jabs after first case in decades

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AFP) — Ivory Coast began a roll-out of vaccinations against Ebola on Monday, after the country recorded its first known case of the disease since 1994, the health ministry said. “Health workers, close relatives and contacts of the victim” were the first to be vaccinated, getting jabs from 5,000 doses sent from Guinea, spokesman Germain Mahan Sehi said. Ivorian health workers had previously said that vaccinations of “targeted groups” had already begun […]