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In total, 46 new Ebola cases were recorded in the north-east of Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) during the week of November 19 to 25, according to data released today by the Congolese Ministry of Health.
The number of infections, which is already considered the largest epidemic of Ebola in the history of the DRC, already totals 419 cases, of which 372 have been confirmed in the laboratory and 47 are probable.
The number of probable deaths since the declaration of this tenth epidemic on August 1 in the provinces of North Kivu and Ituri, raises to 240 deaths, of which 193 have been tested positive, according to the figures. June 25th. November
It's also the first time an Ebola outbreak has epicentered an area of conflict, where hundreds of armed groups operate and thousands of people who may have been in contact with the virus travel daily, which also limits the safety and fieldwork of health personnel.
To end the death toll, the NGO Alliance for International Medical Action (ALIMA) announced yesterday the launch – through an international consortium coordinated by the World Health Organization (WHO) – of a trial innovative therapeutic clinic. in its treatment center in the city of Beni, North Kivu.
This news is preceded by the approval, by the Ethics Committee of the School of Public Health of the University of Kinshasa, of a protocol of randomized clinical trials. with four molecules: mAb 114, ZMapp, Remdesivir and Regeneron.
These four treatments will be distributed randomly, always with the prior agreement of the patient or family, without the treatment center can choose between them to avoid any subjectivity in the trials.
This latest Ebola epidemic is the most serious in the history of the DRC in relation to the number of cases, since it exceeds the record of 318 infections recorded in 1976 at the first outbreak of this virus . in Yambuku, in the northwestern province of Ecuador.
Ebola is transmitted through direct contact with contaminated blood and body fluids. It is all the more virulent as the process is advanced and reaches a death rate of 90%.
The worst known epidemic of this disease in the world was declared in March 2014; the first cases date back to December 2013 in Guinea Conakry, from where it spread to Sierra Leone and Liberia.
WHO terminated the epidemic in January 2016, after recording 11,300 deaths and more than 28,500 cases, although the UN agency admitted that these figures may to be conservative.
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