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(CNN) – The Ministry of Health of the Democratic Republic of Congo officially declared Tuesday that the country's fight against an Ebola outbreak has ended, according to the World Health Organization.
reported an outbreak of Ebola haemorrhagic fever in May, the ninth epidemic reported in the country.
According to the Ministry of Health, 54 cases of Ebola were recorded during the epidemic, including 33 deaths.
The Ministry of Health decided to declare the outbreak if no other case was confirmed and two complete incubation periods of 21 days each, the day after the last patient was discharged Ebola, wrote the spokesman of WHO, Tarik Jašarević.
The last patient was released after a negative blood test for Ebola on June 12th.
"The DRC has defeated this Ebola epidemic by traditional methods such as case investigation, contact tracing, and case management." New tools such as vaccination of people who might be infected with the virus, "Jašarević said.
"The government has been quick, transparent and has welcomed the much-needed support.The WHO officials originally thought that the recent epidemic would remain in isolated rural communities in Congo and would not not spread in more densely populated cities, which was the case in previous outbreaks, said Dr. Peter Salama, Medical Epidemiologist and Deputy Director General of Emergency Preparedness and Response at WHO [19659002] "Then, in the early days, cases were confirmed in the urban center of Mbandaka with more than one million people. This meant that we had to quickly change our strategy, "he said.
He added that as the epidemic increased, the risk was enormous for Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, as well than the big cities of neighboring countries.
The rapid spread of the epidemic in a big city was one movement that Salama reported has become more common in recent years among various infectious diseases.
"Maybe because of climate change, because of changes in reservoir animals or vectors and because of human encroachment on animal populations, we are seeing more and more urban epidemics of these types of pathogens highly threatening – and this poses a very different set of risks, "said Salama.
Regarding the Ebola virus, scientists believe that people are infected with the Ebola virus in contact with an infected animal, such as a bat, and that the virus is spreading from one person to another. nobody to each other. The Ebola virus can only spread among humans through direct contact with the body fluids of an infected person, such as urine, saliva, sweat, feces, vomit, bad milk and sperm
. The spread of the event – an event where a case can literally trigger dozens or hundreds of cases – is higher simply because of the density of the population, "Salama said.
"Therefore, these diseases become even more deadly and even more risky in urban settings, and that's something we've seen now with Ebola this time around," he said. Congo, WHO released $ 2 million from its emergency reserve fund, deployed a team and activated an emergency incident management system.
With the support of many other organizations – United Nations, World Food Program, USAID, the Wellcome Trust, the World Bank and several countries – more funds for the Ebola response have been provided to WHO. Hundreds of health workers and supplies were shipped inside and outside the affected areas.
To combat the epidemic, health workers turned not only to traditional approaches, but also to new tools, such as an experimental vaccine and experimental drugs
"We had a vaccine. the future of Ebola control, "Salama said.
"In addition, although we did not have the opportunity to use them this time, we had under research protocol the potential to use four drugs. people already infected with the Ebola virus, we had drugs on the spot at the end of the outbreak and we could use them, "he said." It's not enough to take traditional measures of 39, containment of public health. We really believe that the same types of vaccines and medicines that we would offer Western patients should also be offered to people in developing countries. "
During the outbreak, at least 3,300 people were vaccinated with an experimental Ebola vaccine from the pharmaceutical company Merck called rVSV-ZEBOV, according to the WHO." One thing that is different this time and that really has made a big difference is the availability of Merck's vaccine, "said Don Sodora, a virologist at the Center for Infectious Disease Research, who recently announced that he would join the Seattle Children's Research Institute The combined scientific team will form the largest pediatric infectious disease research program in the United States.
"It is still being tested," he says about the vaccine, "Merck is still trying to understand its effectiveness, but it can really provide an opportunity to start protecting people."
Among those eligible to receive the vaccine were health and work first contacts, as well as contacts – and even contact contacts – of confirmed Ebola patients, dead or alive.
Health workers administered the vaccine using the cycle strategy: the vaccine was administered to Ebola groups, such as family members or caregivers, as well as contacts of these contacts.
Health workers also followed and followed the health of people in close contact with people infected with the Ebola virus or who died of the disease. . The process has been called contact tracing, which helps prevent the spread of the virus.
"In typical ways of containing these types of outbreaks, you want to identify patients very quickly, and you want to make sure that people who are feverish and sick do not leave an area," Sodora said.
"There are a number of problems with haemorrhagic fever viruses that make them particularly problematic in terms of transmission: they have this initial period when people are infected but do not show symptoms, and that's a problem," he said, adding that once infected, they are extremely contagious.
"The best strategy, then, is to identify the infected," he said, "Go quickly with qualified health workers and set up a quarantine quickly." "C & # 39 is the main lesson we learned. "
There is still much to be learned about the Ebola virus and the duration of the risk.
A study published Monday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases revealed that After a woman in Liberia survived an Ebola infection, she transmitted the virus to one or more members of her family, causing the death of her 15-year-old son
. Ebola virus can persist in a person long after the person has recovered from an acute infection.The study is also the first, to the knowledge of the authors, to provide evidence suggestive of the transmission of the Ebola virus by a woman survivor after at such a long period of time.
Such transmissions are rare but emphasize the need for continuous prevention. surveillance, "said Dr. Emily Kainne Dokubo, researcher at the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention and senior author of the study.
" Risk Factors for Persistence of Ebola Virus in Body Fluids are unknown. the virus persists among some survivors is varied, "she said.
The teenage son of the woman was tested positive for the virus in November 2015 after showing symptoms.The researchers took samples from the members of the family and tested blood samples.
The woman's husband and 8-year-old son were also tested positive and their two youngest sons, 5 years and 2 months, were tested negative. also tested negative but had anti-Ebola antibodies, indicating an earlier infection.
The researchers found that the woman must have been infected with the virus after caring for her sick brother, who died of Ebola in 2014. [19659002Aprèss'êtreoccupéedeluielleestdevenuetrèsmaladeavecdessymptômescompatiblesaveclamaladieduvirusEbolamaisellen'apasdemandédesoinsEnseptembre2015elleadonnénaissanceàsonplusjeunefilsetesttombéemaladeaprè
The researchers noted that the disease could have reappeared because pregnancy and childbirth could have altered the woman's immune defenses.
"The mother's infection may have burst after her pregnancy, and the virus was then pbaded on to other family members," Dokubo said.
The woman could also have pbaded protective antibodies to her newborn son. has not tested positive for the virus. In the meantime, she probably transmitted the virus to her husband, who in turn pbaded it on to their older sons.
"The results of this study and recent cases of Ebola virus disease highlight the risk of outbreaks of Ebola virus," said the researchers.
During the Ebola Outbreak in West Africa between 2014 and 2016, the largest in history, scientists have learned how the virus could persist in certain sites of the body, including eye fluids, the central nervous system and the Dr. Colleen Kraft, Associate Professor of Infectious Diseases at the Emory School of Medicine in Atlanta, who was not involved in the new study, said: "We already know that this persistence has led to transmissions occasional, "said Kraft. "Women who become pregnant after being exposed to or recovered from Ebola should be closely monitored clinically for relapse."
In response to this year's epidemic in Congo, the world seemed better prepared – especially in comparison with "one of the many painful lessons of the devastating Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014 was that the world was expecting much more from the World Health Organization than it could then do, "said Jašarević of the WHO.
During this outbreak, 28,616 cases of Ebola virus disease and 11,310 deaths were reported in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. According to the CDC, 36 cases and 15 additional deaths occurred when the epidemic spread outside these three countries. "Since then, we have been striving to make sure that the world is better prepared, not only against the Ebola virus." At present, the WHO and other global health organizations the end of the Ebola response now, "Jašarević said:" We can already say that we have helped to improve surveillance systems and that, for the next time, we will We will have protocols for vaccines and therapeutics, "he said." Another legacy is capacity building, such as the training of vaccinators who can not only meet national needs but also help neighboring countries.
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