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Today, six months have pbaded since the 10th Ebola outbreak was declared in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Before I say anything else, I want to thank and thank our colleagues from WHO and our partners on the ground for their courage, commitment and professionalism. They make us all proud. I also wish to commend the unwavering leadership of the Ministry of Health of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and other colleagues. No country would want to deal with this deadly pathogen, and their spirit of cooperation allows us all to deal with the virus together.
Looking back over these six months, we can clearly see the strategies that have managed to control the epidemic in some of the affected areas such as Mangina, Beni, Komanda and Oicha, although we continue to face sudden outbreaks. these areas and epidemics in others.
What worked well were public health measures such as the training of health workers in the prevention and control of infections in health centers; closer engagement with communities – especially women and religious groups; Other public health measures such as case investigation and contact tracing, alongside the use of more recent tools. Up to now, 70,000 people have accepted and received the experimental vaccine, and 350 patients have been treated with therapeutic drugs, available for the first time at this scale.
In each city or region, the epidemic has slightly different factors. Epidemics in the Butembo and Katwa health zones are partly caused by transmission in private and public health centers, with about one-fifth of patients reporting having been in contact with a health facility before the onset of the disease. The others are infected in the communities.
We are adapting our actions accordingly in both health facilities and at community level.
Let me give some examples:
To strengthen infection prevention and control practices, we prioritize facilities according to risks, train health workers and monitor their progress, and provide incentives to encourage best practices. We are also working with the most at-risk health facilities in unaffected health areas in North Kivu and surrounding provinces and countries.
In addition, we are working with health facilities to ensure that these individuals and communities report all deaths, allowing teams to perform burial with dignity and safety.
WHO, the Red Cross, UNICEF and other partners work together to collect and badyze community responses to ensure that our actions are appropriately tailored and address community concerns and needs .
At the base of all this, the United Nations peacekeeping force provides us with the umbrella of security under which we can operate.
These are the approaches that work. But let's go back to look at the context. The Ebola outbreak occurs in a country that also responds to epidemics of polio, cholera, measles, and monkeypox and to the health needs related to the humanitarian crisis that is raging in other provinces. This puts a lot of pressure on the health system in general.
In Beni, one of the areas affected by the Ebola virus, we had to deal with an epidemic of malaria at the same time as the response to the Ebola virus. This required additional teams working hand in hand with our Ebola response teams. The campaign against the mbad of antimalarial drugs, which affected 300,000 people in Beni, helped reduce the pressure on the health system.
Ultimately, this epidemic has further highlighted the weaknesses of the health system and reinforced, once again, our ultimate message: stronger health systems are the only way to quickly detect, respond and even end to epidemics.
By using proven public health measures and new tools, under the leadership of the government and working with all agencies, WHO is committed to addressing these challenges and ending the epidemic.
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