DRC Ebola Outbreak Continues To Grow, As U.N., South Sudan Prepare For Disease’s Potential Spread Across Border

Bloomberg: U.N. Steps Up Measures to Combat Ebola at South Sudan-Congo Border
“…The U.N., the World Health Organization, and South Sudan’s Health Ministry are training medical staff and have moved equipment to centers near the border to screen people, U.N. head of mission David Shearer told reporters Wednesday in the capital, Juba…” (Francis, 5/15).

CIDRAP News: Ebola outbreak grows by 19 as WHO notes ‘stop and go’ response
“The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) ministry of health recorded 19 new cases of Ebola [Wednesday] in the ongoing outbreak in North Kivu and Ituri provinces. Eleven new deaths were also recorded. … In a situation update published [Tuesday], the World Health Organization (WHO) described the recent spike in cases as part of a ‘stop and go’ pattern that’s come to define this outbreak…” (Soucheray, 5/15).

Devex: The challenges facing MSF in supporting DRC Ebola response
“The response to an epidemic starts within the community, according to Dr. Joanne Liu, international president of Médecins Sans Frontières. But with the current Ebola outbreak facing the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liu told Devex communities have been left behind, creating a failure in the response. … A keynote speaker at the World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine’s Congress on Disaster and Emergency Medicine held in Brisbane, Australia, from May 7-10, Liu cited the Ebola crisis in discussing the future of emergency response. The growing security mindset in responding to humanitarian crises, she said, risked distorting the response and management and creating greater division with communities in need of support…” (Cornish, 5/16).

Additional coverage of the DRC Ebola outbreak, response, and research efforts is available from Healio and HuffPost.

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