Ebola spreads to new areas of DR Congo as outbreak widens

{"text":[[{"start":7.5,"text":"The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been confirmed in 24 separate locations across three provinces, underlining the wide geographical spread of a disease that probably went undetected for weeks before the outbreak was announced last month."}],[{"start":23.85,"text":"DR Congo’s National Institute of Public Health on Wednesday said 344 cases of the deadly haemorrhagic fever had been recorded, including in Mambasa, nearly 250 kilometres by road from the mining town of Mongbwalu where the outbreak is thought to have begun."}],[{"start":40.650000000000006,"text":"There have also been one death and 15 confirmed cases in neighbouring Uganda. One of those is a Congolese resident known to have travelled to the United Arab Emirates before falling ill. "}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":52.60000000000001,"text":"Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, said the WHO was working with UAE and Ugandan authorities to “gather additional information, assess the risk of exposure during travel and to facilitate contact tracing”."}],[{"start":69.60000000000001,"text":"The UAE health ministry said in a post on X on Wednesday: “The public health situation in the UAE remains stable. The WHO continues to assess the overall global public health risk as low.” It added that the emirates “maintain precautionary preparedness measures focused on surveillance, early detection, airport readiness and healthcare preparedness”."}],[{"start":92.55000000000001,"text":"Forty-four people have died in the outbreak and six infected people are known to have recovered. A US healthcare worker who was infected in DR Congo is being treated in Germany. "}],[{"start":104.15,"text":"Tedros last week warned that the epidemic was “outpacing” efforts to contain it. However, after returning from a visit to the Ituri region at the epicentre of the outbreak, he struck a cautiously more optimistic note. "}],[{"start":118.85000000000001,"text":"“What I saw gave me hope,” he said on Wednesday, referring to the level of response and the sure but steady establishment of labs to test specimens and health centres to care for and quarantine patients. “The outbreak had a big head start and we’re still behind,” he said. “But we’re catching up.”"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":136.70000000000002,"text":"Tedros’s cautious optimism was bolstered by news that, as labs worked through a backlog of samples, the number of suspected Ebola cases had fallen from more than 1,000 last week to 116. "}],[{"start":150.00000000000003,"text":"Experts said that, while this was good news, they could not read too much into it, since undiagnosed cases of malaria and typhoid can be confused with Ebola, making it inevitable that suspected cases of Ebola outnumber confirmed ones. "}],[{"start":165.00000000000003,"text":"“There’ll be cases we don’t know about, some of whom died and some of whom didn’t die, and how that affects the overall figures is hard to say,” said Paul Hunter, professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":177.60000000000002,"text":"Jean-Jacques Muyembe, a microbiologist and legendary figure in the fight against successive Ebola epidemics, said labs had worked through 1,190 samples collected in the second half of May. From now on, he continued, there was capacity to test all new cases, which would give health experts a much clearer picture of the epidemic in real time. "}],[{"start":200.90000000000003,"text":"However, Muyembe warned that tracing people who could have come into contact with infected patients was proving difficult in a region with hundreds of thousands of displaced people and groups of armed militia. "}],[{"start":212.45000000000005,"text":"“Contact tracing is the weak aspect of our response, we have to strengthen that,” he said. “The problem is that some of these suspected cases are in areas controlled by armed groups, so it is sometimes difficult to go there.”"}],[{"start":224.55000000000004,"text":"Tedros said that roughly 45 per cent of patients were being traced, but the target was more than 90 per cent. "}],[{"start":231.40000000000003,"text":"There is no vaccine or cure for the Bundibugyo species of ebolavirus that is responsible for the latest outbreak."}],[{"start":238.35000000000002,"text":"Ebolaviruses are thought to live in bats and jump to humans via contact, such as the consumption of wild animals. The pathogens spread between humans when the bodily fluids of an infected person come into contact with eyes, nose, mouth or broken skin."}],[{"start":254.10000000000002,"text":"“It’s too early to say whether this outbreak is out of hand,” said Mohammed Saani Yakubu, director-general of ActionAid in Kinshasa, the Congolese capital. "}],[{"start":264,"text":"The fact that six people had recovered from Ebola was good news, he said. Not only did it mean that patients could overcome Ebola through medical care, but it would also help to calm popular fears that entering an Ebola care facility was a death sentence. Several facilities have been attacked. "}],[{"start":281.5,"text":"The Ebola survivors were already being invited on to radio chat shows to share their experience and assure fellow citizens that Ebola was beatable, he said.  "}],[{"start":290.65,"text":"“At least we’re getting somewhere. People have come to accept that there is no vaccine and the only way to control this is through prevention — early detection, isolation and basic hygiene protocols,” Yakubu said. “This gives us some hope as far as the response is concerned.”"}],[{"start":314.09999999999997,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1780544235_2618.mp3"}