Health Desk- 08 March,
2020: The World Health Organization said Friday it needs $20 million to
fight Ebola in DR Congo, even as the end of the devastating 19-month epidemic
finally seemed within grasp.
While the world's attention has been focused on the
coronavirus, the last patient being treated for Ebola in the Democratic
Republic of Congo was discharged on Tuesday.
If no more cases are diagnosed, the epidemic will officially
end within 42 days from the date of the last confirmed patient's second
negative test.
"The end of the outbreak will be declared on April
12" barring further cases, WHO assistant director-general for emergency
response Ibrahima Soce Fall told the media in Geneva on Friday.
But he issued a note of warning, saying "it is critical
to maintain surveillance and rapid response capacity" in order to quickly
diagnose any new cases.
"We have over 1,169 survivors. So we have an important
programme to continue to provide care to survivors, but also to make sure that
we don't have any flare-ups," he added.
DR Congo's most recent Ebola outbreak was first identified
in August 2018 and WHO declared it a "public health emergency of
international concern" last July.
It has killed 2,264 people in DR Congo, the vast central
African country's tenth Ebola epidemic since 1976.
It is the second-most deadly Ebola epidemic in history,
after an outbreak killed more than 11,000 people in West Africa from 2013 to
2016.
Courtesy: Afp, Geneva
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