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In total, 46 new cases of Ebola were recorded in the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in the week of November 19 to 25, according to data released Tuesday by the Congolese Ministry of Health.
In what is considered the largest Ebola outbreak in the history of DR Congo, there are already 419 cases, of which 372 have been confirmed in the laboratory and 47 are probable.
The number of probable deaths is 240 since the tenth outbreak reported on August 1 in the northern provinces and Ituri. Of these, 193 had positive results, according to official data of 25 November.
In addition, for the first time, an Ebola epidemic is at the heart of a conflict zone in which about 100 armed groups operate and thousands of people who may have been exposed to the virus daily limit security and work. in the field of health teams.
To end the balance sheet, the Alliance for International Medical Action (ALIMA) announced Monday the launch – thanks to an international consortium coordinated by the World Health Organization (WHO) – to 39, a clinical trial treatment center of the city of Beni in North Kivu.
This news is preceded by the approval by the Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Public Health of the University of Kinshasa of a protocol of randomized clinical trials with four treatments: mAb 114, ZMapp, Remdesivir and Regeneron.
These four treatments will be distributed randomly, always with the prior agreement of the patient or his family and without the treatment center can choose patients, to avoid any subjectivity in the trials.
This latest outbreak of Ebola is the most serious in the history of DRCogo with regard 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 and becomes more virulent as the process progresses, reaching a 90% mortality rate.
The worst known epidemic of this disease in the world was declared in March 2014, the first cases dating back to December 2013 in Guinea Conakry, from where it spread to Sierra Leone and Liberia.
The WHO ended the epidemic in January 2016, after recording 11,300 deaths and more than 28,500 cases, although the UN agency admitted that these figures could to be conservative.
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