Dr. Richard Lokudu, the medical director of Mongbwalu General Referral Hospital, has received barely any compensation for his work on the front line of one of Congo’s deadliest Ebola virus outbreaks. Lokudu and several of his colleagues work all day at the hospital treating an influx of patients. Notifications of suspected cases come even late at night. “I have not received my allowance [and] what happened to others could happen to me as well,” Lokudu said. “Despite all the infection prevention...
The US, Mexico and Canada have announced Ebola-related travel restrictions before the start of the World Cup.
Nearly 500 Ebola cases have now been confirmed in the deadly outbreak raging in central Africa, a WHO overview showed on Saturday, amid mounting concern over the swelling scale of the epidemic. In its daily update on the situation, the World Health Organization tallied 452 confirmed cases, including 82 deaths, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo), where the outbreak was declared three weeks ago. In neighbouring Uganda, meanwhile, it counted 19 confirmed cases, including two deaths. The...
Uganda reported three more cases and one more death from the outbreak which has spread from the DRC.
The insect, which has been found in America for the first time since 1966, is a growing concern in the southern US.
At least three vaccines are being funded, research being fast-tracked as the outbreak spreads faster than the response.
There are currently no approved drugs that target Bundibugyo - the species of Ebola responsible for this outbreak.
Women bear the brunt of DRC's Ebola outbreak.
Uganda has closed its border with neighbouring DR Congo for four weeks in an effort to contain an Ebola outbreak.
Ugandan authorities on Wednesday ordered the closure of the border with Congo “with immediate effect” as suspected cases surge near 1,000 in its neighbour of a rare type of Ebola and as others emerge at home. The measure, which goes against World Health Organization guidance, underscored growing fears of contagion in this East African country that, like Congo, has experience responding to Ebola outbreaks but is faced with a type this time, Bundibugyo, with no approved medicines or vaccines. A...
Bunia faces isolation amid Ebola outbreak fears, with airspace closure and Ugandan border curbs adding economic strain.
The country has recorded more than 60,000 suspected cases of measles in just over two months.
Most cases are in the Northern Territory with some also in Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland.
The Ebola outbreak in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo is spreading as cases been confirmed in Uganda.
Kate White says she is "extremely concerned about the inability to get resources" to the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Officials in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) updated the death toll from the Ebola outbreak to 204 late on Saturday, hours after the Red Cross said three volunteers had died there and Uganda confirmed three new Ebola cases. A health ministry statement said 204 deaths had been recorded in three provinces of the vast Central African country, from 867 suspected cases. The last World Health Organization (WHO) toll on Friday put the number of deaths at 177 from 750 suspected cases. The WHO has...
Anger and mistrust growing over Ebola burials as traditions clash with medical response to prevent spread.
They are thought to have caught the virus before the outbreak was identified, the Red Cross says.
Most cases recorded by doctors among children aged between six months and five years.
Ebola is spreading faster than responders can track it in eastern Congo, where health workers managed to follow up with barely one in five identified contacts in a single day. Authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) reported 83 confirmed infections, 746 suspected cases and 1,603 identified contacts as of May 21, according to the health ministry. Yet health workers were able to follow up with only 342 contacts that day – about 21 per cent of the total under monitoring – according to...
The new cases include a driver who transported the country's first confirmed patient and a health worker.
With almost 750 suspected Ebola cases in the DRC, health measures intensified along the DRC–Uganda border
Those caught up in West Africa's Ebola outbreak a decade ago on how best to tackle the current epidemic.
Provincial gov't in Ituri province, the epicentre of the outbreak, has banned public gatherings to stop spread of virus.
The head of the World Health Organization said on Friday that the Ebola outbreak in Congo is “spreading rapidly” and now poses a “very high” risk at the national level. WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the UN health agency was revising upwards to “very high” its assessment of the risk within Congo, which had previously been deemed as high. The risk remains high for regional spread and low at global levels, he told reporters. The WHO chief noted that 82 cases have been...
Protesters set a hospital on fire in the Democratic of Congo, as authorities struggle to contain an Ebola outbreak.
Grieving relatives and friends of a suspected Ebola victim were prevented from taking his body for burial.
Residents in DRC torch facility over burial disputes, spotlighting challenges in tackling Ebola outbreak.
Efforts to stop the latest outbreak of the deadly disease have been hampered by armed conflict in eastern DR Congo.
The Bundibugyo strain of Ebola has a fatality rate of up to 50 percent and no approved vaccine as yet.
The outbreak, caused by a rare Ebola species, is thought to have caused 139 deaths so far.
Families in Mongbwalu grieve as Ebola returns, exposing serious gaps in healthcare and outbreak preparedness.
Health workers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are restoring Ebola treatment centres.
The World Health Organization chief voiced concern on Tuesday about the “scale and speed” of an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo which has killed an estimated 131 people. The WHO has declared the surge of the highly contagious haemorrhagic fever an international health emergency and was expected to hold an emergency meeting on the crisis on Tuesday. No vaccine or therapeutic treatment exists for the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola responsible for the latest outbreak of the disease,...
An outbreak of Ebola in DR Congo involves a rare strain and is in an area affected by conflict.
DRC health minister visits hotspot for Ebola outbreak
One of the six Americans believed to have been exposed is experiencing symptoms, according to media reports.
A number of Americans currently in the Democratic Republic of Congo are believed to have had exposure to suspected cases in the country’s latest Ebola outbreak, with several deemed to have had high-risk exposures, US health news website STAT News reported on Sunday. At least one of these individuals may have developed symptoms, the report said. Reuters could not immediately verify the report. The Ebola outbreak in the DR Congo and Uganda has been declared a public health emergency...
The new Ebola outbreak has been reported in the towns of Rwampara, Mongwalu, and Bunia in northeastern DRC
One of four Canadians who returned home from a cruise ship where there was a hantavirus outbreak received a “presumptive positive” test result for the virus, Canadian officials said on Saturday. Results from the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg to confirm the case are expected to come over the weekend, said Bonnie Henry, the public health officer for the province of British Columbia. “Clearly this is not what we hoped for, but it is what we planned for,” Henry said. The person, one member...
Africa CDC concerned that outbreak of Bundibugyo strain could spread rapidly due to intense population movement.
At least 80 deaths have been reported in Congo’s new Ebola disease outbreak in the eastern Ituri province, authorities said, as health workers raced to intensify screening and contact tracing to contain the disease on Saturday. Officials first announced the outbreak on Friday, with 65 deaths and 246 suspected cases. In Ituri’s capital, Bunia, locals recounted their fears amid constant burials. “Every day, people are dying … and this has been going on for about a week. In a single day, we bury...
Three deaths linked to a hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship have revived memories of COVID-19. What has the world lear
The British ship docked in the southwestern French city of Bordeaux reports 49 suspected cases.
The ship set sail from Belfast on Friday and is currently at a port in Bordeaux.
A Spanish passenger evacuated from the cruise ship at the centre of a hantavirus outbreak has tested positive for the virus, Spain’s health ministry announced on Tuesday as the World Health Organization said it has now confirmed 11 cases, including three people from the cruise who died. The passenger with the new confirmed case of hantavirus was in quarantine in a military hospital in Madrid, where 13 other Spanish nationals evacuated on Sunday – who all tested negative for the virus – also are...
The situation could still change and there might be more confirmed cases, warns the head of the World Health Organization.
The US and France are the latest to confirm hantavirus cases as evacuations from a cruise ship are under way.
The outbreak was reported on the expedition cruise ship MV Hondius, where three deaths have been reported
Passengers from the MV Hondius, the cruise ship at the centre of a Hantavirus outbreak, have begun disembarking.
Hantavirus is usually spread by rodents but can in rare cases be transmitted person to person.
More than 100 people aboard a cruise ship that departed from Fort Lauderdale in Florida last month have fallen ill from norovirus, according to the US Centres for Disease Control. The Caribbean Princess, a Princess Cruises ship, departed from Port Everglades on April 28 for an 11-day voyage, according to Cruise Mapper. But on Thursday, the CDC announced that 102 passengers and 13 crew members were sick and had been isolated. There are more than 4,000 people on board, according to the CDC. The...
Two Singapore residents who had been on board a hantavirus-hit cruise ship have tested negative to the rare respiratory disease, according to Singapore’s Communicable Diseases Agency (CDA). The two men aged 65 and 67 had been on the MV Hondius and also the same flight as a confirmed hantavirus case from St Helena to Johannesburg on April 25, the CDA said a day earlier. The confirmed case did not travel to the city state and died in South Africa. The CDA’s National Public Health Laboratory...
Two new suspected cases of hantavirus were reported on Friday, one in Spain and the other on the remote South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha, as experts race to contain an outbreak that began on a luxury cruise ship. The announcements in locations thousands of kilometres (miles) apart will fuel concern about a cluster of cases so far associated with three deaths – though the World Health Organization has repeatedly said the risk to the wider public is low and the virus does not transmit...
About 12 countries have so far been linked to the hantavirus outbreak on the MV Hondius, as the UN health agency confirms at least five cases.
The risk of a hantavirus outbreak in Asia remains minimal, according to health experts, despite the return of two Singapore residents who were on board a cruise ship where three people died from the disease that triggered a regional panic. Hantaviruses are a family of rat-carried viruses that can infect humans through direct exposure, even though transmission between people is extremely rare. The disease takes its name from South Korea’s Hantan River, where an early strain was identified after...