Ebola | Pakistan

Pakistan has intensified screening measures at airports across the country, along with other precautionary steps, amid the recent Ebola virus outbreak in Africa, the health ministry said on Saturday. In a handout, the minister said Health Minister Mustafa Kamal had directed authorities to implement precautionary screening protocols at all airports to prevent the possible spread of the virus. The spread of the recent Ebola virus outbreak is limited to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda, and the risk to Pakistan is extremely low due to limited travel links with the affected countries, the health ministry said. The ministry added that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) office in Pakistan were continuously monitoring the situation. The ministry directed all provinces and the Border Health Services to remain on alert. The ministry also noted that Pakistan possessed the capacity to diagnose Ebola and said directives had been issued to ensure all necessar...

The risk from the deadly Ebola outbreak has been raised to the highest level for the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the World Health Organisation (WHO) said Friday, as the toll continues to rise. The WHO upgraded its risk assessment level from high to very high for the DRC, while keeping the regional risk level at high and the global risk level at low. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the situation was “deeply worrisome”. He said there were now nearly 750 suspected cases in the DRC and 177 suspected deaths, as health workers scramble to track down contacts of everyone thought to be infected with the virus. “The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is spreading rapidly,” he told a press conference. “So far, 82 cases have been confirmed in DRC, with seven confirmed deaths. “But we know the epidemic in DRC is much larger. There are now almost 750 suspected cases and 177 suspected deaths.” He said the situation in Uganda was “stable”, with two cases confirmed in people who travelle...

The World Health Organisation (WHO) on Wednesday said the risk of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) deadly Ebola outbreak was currently high at the national and regional levels but low worldwide. WHO experts said that while investigations into its origins were ongoing, given the scale of the situation in the eastern DRC, the outbreak probably began a couple of months ago. But the UN health agency’s emergency committee said it did not currently meet the pandemic emergency threshold. “WHO assesses the risk of the epidemic as high at the national and regional levels, and low at the global level,” said the organisation’s chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. So far, 51 cases have been confirmed in the DRC, in the eastern provinces of Ituri and North Kivu, “although we know the scale of the epidemic in DRC is much larger,” he told a press conference at the WHO’s headquarters in Geneva. He said Uganda had also reported two confirmed cases in the capital Kampala, including one death, while a US national working i...

The head of the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Tuesday expressed concern at the speed and scale of the Ebola outbreak in central Africa — declared a “continental” emergency — as the number of deaths in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) jumped to 131. The toll from the Ebola outbreak in the DRC has risen to an estimated 131 deaths from 513 suspected cases, health minister Samuel Roger Kamba said. There has also been one death in neighbouring Uganda. However, speaking to Congolese national television overnight, Kamba cautioned that the toll was an estimate and further research was needed to confirm whether all 131 suspected deaths were indeed linked to Ebola. No vaccine or treatment exists for the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola behind the latest outbreak of the deadly disease, which has killed more than 15,000 people in Africa in the past half century. The outbreak’s epicentre is in the northeastern Ituri province on the border with Uganda and South Sudan, whose status as a gold-mining hub leads to people ...

By the time health officials confirmed new Ebola infections in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo last week, the total number of suspected cases meant the outbreak was already one of the largest on record. A series of challenges and missteps delayed detection, two Congolese officials familiar with the response told Reuters, allowing the disease to spread undetected into rebel-held territory in the east and across the border to the capital of Uganda. Local funeral practices helped the virus spread before any alarm was raised, diagnostic tests in a local laboratory were calibrated for the wrong strain of Ebola, and samples sent to Kinshasa were not stored or shipped properly, the officials said. Experts say the resulting delays risk hobbling efforts to contain the outbreak, which the World Health Organisation (WHO) at the weekend declared a public health emergency of international concern. “It’s just a scattered mess right now. I don’t think we have anything close to a real idea of how many cases there are,” ...

The World Health Organisation (WHO) on Sunday declared an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda a “public health emergency of international concern”, posing risks to neighbouring countries. The WHO said the outbreak, caused by the Bundibugyo virus, does not meet the criteria of a pandemic emergency, but that countries sharing land borders with the DRC are at high risk for further spread. The UN health agency said in a statement that 80 suspected deaths, eight laboratory-confirmed cases and 246 suspected cases had been reported as of Saturday in the DRC’s Ituri province across at least three health zones, including Bunia, Rwampara and Mongbwalu. International spread documented, WHO says The DRC health ministry had said on Friday that 80 people had died in the new outbreak in the eastern province. The 17th outbreak in the country, where Ebola was first identified in 1976, could in fact be much larger, given the high positivity rate of the initial samples and increasing number of su...