Salud

First two Ebola cases confirmed in Congo's South Kivu

por Juan Bueno·Agosto 19, 2019 06:35
Dr Jean Jacques Muyembe the Congolese doctor behind the Ebola cure

Dr Jean Jacques Muyembe the Congolese doctor behind the Ebola cure

Last month, it reached the region's largest city of Goma, home to almost two million people on the Rwandan border.

Top doctors fighting Ebola quickly used the case on Tuesday to press the message that people can recover from the potentially deadly disease if they seek proper care.

Jean-Jacques Muyembe, chief general of Congo's Institut National de Recherche Biomédicale in DRC, who co-drove the preliminary, said the outcomes implied that "starting now and into the foreseeable future, we will never again say that Ebola is hopeless".

"Ebola kills quickly and Ebola heals quickly. We gave them treatment that is effective and here in a short time both are cured". The mother died Thursday and her child is being treated by a response team, said Muyembe's statement.

Researchers are a bit nearer to having the option to fix the unsafe Ebola haemorrhagic fever after two test medications indicated survival paces of as much as 90% in a clinical preliminary in Congo.

During the clinical trials, these experimental drugs - an antibody cocktail called REGN-EB3 developed by Regeneron and a monoclonal antibody called mAb114 - improved "survival rates from the disease more than two other treatments being tested". In the trial, significantly fewer people died among those given the Regeneron drug or the NIH's, about 30%, compared to those who received another treatment.

Explaining how much work has gone into finding a cure, Dr Muyembe told BBC: "I spent four decades of my life thinking about how to treat patients with the Ebola virus".

According to representatives from the ministry of health, the outbreak has already claimed the life of 1,808 persons while a total of 2,765 cases were confirmed.

Most of the cases reported outside the area of the immediate outbreak, including across the border in Uganda, have involved patients who have travelled from the area at the centre of the outbreak in North Kivu. He said people arriving in Goma are being monitored at the city's entry points.

The latest cases, which have been concentrated around the cities of Beni and Butembo, follow recent deaths from the disease in the major city of Goma. "All of the 200 contacts we are following are doing well".

"From now on we will no longer say that Ebola is not curable".

The Congolese doctor added, "We are waiting until the end of the 21-day surveillance period". Response efforts have been repeatedly hampered by attacks on health workers and continuing mistrust among the affected communities; many people in the region don't believe the virus is real and choose to stay at home when they fall ill, infecting those who care for them.

Ebola's spread to a new part of Democratic Republic of Congo is a disturbing sign that health workers are failing to keep track of high-risk people on the move, aid agencies said on Friday.