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AThe World Health Organization (WHO), the country's Ministry of Health and other partners are working to find ways to treat Ebola patients in the region where the epidemic continues to spread. to rage.
Doctors Without Borders and ALIMA, the medical organizations that ran the operations, withdrew their staff because of the danger to which they were exposed.
The WHO will remain, but it is developing contingency plans to reduce or withdraw staff if the violence continues, STAT said Friday Dr. Michel Yao, head of the agency's response to Ebola in the DRC.
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"At the moment, we are not withdrawing," Yao said. "But of course we are working on different emergency plans. If the situation gets worse, we will not put our staff at risk. We should at least reduce or withdraw. "
The current outbreak is now in its eighth month. To date, 885 people have been infected and 555 have died, making it the second highest number ever recorded.
The epidemic was very difficult to contain because it occurs in a war zone. Progress has been slow, with modest gains generally followed by the setbacks that occurred when violence erupted in the affected provinces of North Kivu and Ituri.
For months, the violence has mainly targeted the DRC's armed forces or the UN peacekeeping operation that has been operating in the region for years. Recently, however, Ebola workers and facilities have been targeted on Katwa and Butembo, the hot spots of transmission.
The workers who administer the vaccine, who trace the contacts of known cases and those who disinfect the outbreaks of known cases, were attacked. "The teams are now scared," said Yao, acknowledging that the violence affected morale.
On Sunday, unknown assailants set fire to an Ebola treatment center in Katwa operated by Doctors Without Borders, destroying all the generators of the facility. On Wednesday, armed assailants set fire to the Butembo treatment center, destroying equipment used to store Ebola drugs at the appropriate temperature.
Both treatment centers are now unusable, although the WHO and others are trying to determine if they can be rebuilt.
Eleven Ebola-confirmed patients treated at the facilities were transferred to a 40-bed transit center in a hospital in Katwa, where people suspected of Ebola are being treated. waiting for the test results.
Part of this facility has now been completed for the care of Ebola patients, Yao said. But ALIMA, which operated the transit center, also pulled out its workers, leaving the WHO and other struggles to provide enough medical personnel to care for them.
Yao said there was not enough qualified staff to do a quarter of a day. "Without the participation of … these partners, it will be quite difficult to provide the appropriate care," he said.
WHO has called on the Congolese government to strengthen the security provided by Ebola response workers, in the hope of being able to persuade ALIMA and Médecins sans Frontières to return. The remaining intervention teams must be secured to resume the work of controlling the outbreak. Yao acknowledged, however, that a "militarization" of the response could further undermine community acceptance of Ebola response teams and their methods.
He explained that the reason the answer was targeted was not clear.
"That kind of violence that we can not understand. We think it may be some kind of manipulation to achieve another goal. But we do not really understand why these teams were attacked, "he said.
Social media whispered that the region was "invaded by foreigners," he said. "But in our team, we have more nationals, more locals than internationals. The internationals actually had to train national colleagues who did not have that experience. "
Earlier in the epidemic, community resistance was intense in Beni, which was a hot spot in October and November. The cooperation has improved significantly after people began to understand the threat posed by Ebola. Yao said health workers were starting to see this kind of change in Katwa and Butembo before the recent attacks.
He said that it would be essential to understand what is fueling the violence. The inability to control the epidemic is unthinkable.
"If the disease spreads further and most partners pull out, it will be a major disaster," Yao said. "With Ebola, we have no choice but to control it … We need to find ways."
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