Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is The Guardian.
Chapter 2: How serious is the current Ebola outbreak in the DRC?
Today, how worried should the world be about the latest Ebola outbreak?
Excellencies. Your Excellencies, let's begin our work.
This week, thousands of the world's most distinguished public health experts have all descended on a conference centre in Switzerland.
The World Health Assembly happens every year in Geneva. All of the countries who are members of the World Health Organisation come together and talk about what it's been doing, what they want it to do for the next year.
Excellencies, Directors,
They have committees to discuss things like antimicrobial resistance, neglected tropical diseases and mental health. It's a big deal, basically like the Glastonbury of public health summits.
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Chapter 3: What has been the global response to the Ebola outbreak?
Except, of course, it's a public health summit.
So it can be quite dry.
Let us now continue with adoption.
It can be quite procedural.
To add this item to the agenda.
But this year feels a little bit different. because everyone you go up to, everyone you talk to, at some point in every session, someone is going to say, oh, this Ebola outbreak in the DRC looks a bit worrying, doesn't it? I'm very worried about the DRC. The cases are well over 300. There's been The number of deaths, it's a very porous border.
And when they say worrying, you sit up and listen because these are health professionals. They're used to dealing with outbreaks. They're not really given to hyperbole.
Just a few days ago, WHO declared Ebola as a public health emergency of international concern.
Ebola outbreaks aren't that unusual.
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Chapter 4: What are the symptoms and transmission methods of Ebola?
But this one could be different. There's over 100 dead. There is no vaccine for this strain. And people are getting scared that we could once again see scenes reminiscent of the world's worst Ebola epidemic of a decade ago.
You start thinking about that time of overcrowded treatment centres, you know, bodies in the streets. I don't want to be alarmist. The world has got better at dealing with Ebola.
But just those numbers really kind of bring those images back to the front of your mind. From The Guardian, I'm Annie Kelly.
Today in Focus, are we heading for another Ebola crisis?
Chapter 5: How did the last major Ebola outbreak unfold and get contained?
Katle, you're The Guardian's global health correspondent, and you are currently in Geneva, Switzerland for the World Health Assembly. This is an enormous summit where delegations from 194 member states gather to discuss global health policies. Now we have this Ebola outbreak, which I imagine is causing some concern. So can you tell us first, how has that disrupted everyone there?
I mean, it's something that everyone is talking about. It's something that Dr Tedros, the director general, felt he had to address in his opening remarks.
I'm deeply concerned about the scale and speed of the epidemic. We will convene the emergency committee today to advise us on temporary recommendations.
The head of Africa CDC, which is the continent's kind of top public health body, Dr. John Kaseya, he was supposed to be in Geneva this week. He was actually here at the weekend, but he has cancelled all his meetings and he's flown back to Africa so that he can kind of be on the ground dealing with this Ebola outbreak.
Currently, I'm on panic mode because people are dying. I don't have medicines. I don't have vaccine. This outbreak now in DRC is out of Ituri.
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Chapter 6: What challenges does the DRC face in managing the current outbreak?
It's going to other regions.
I think it's a sign of how seriously people are taking this outbreak.
Can you just remind us, you know, what is Ebola and what are its symptoms?
So Ebola is a disease that can be caused by six different types of ortho-Ebola viruses. And they cause symptoms that in the first case, they don't seem that different from another cold or a flu. You know, you've got your aches, pains, shivers. And then they progress and you get what's called the wet symptoms. So you get vomiting, diarrhea, deadly bleeding.
And that bleeding, I mean, it's a really horrible disease, isn't it? I'm sure we all remember the pictures from the last big outbreak quite a few years ago now. It is a nasty, nasty disease, isn't it?
It is. I mean, Ebola viruses can cause fatality rates of up to 80, 90 percent. But it is much less transmissible than COVID or flu. I think for the Bundibugyo variant, which is what we're talking about in the DRC, previous outbreaks, you've seen death rates of between 30 to 50 percent. So it's quite scary. And how is it spread? How do people catch it?
It spreads through contacts with bodily fluids. So someone caring for an Ebola patient might come into contact with their vomit or their blood. In previous outbreaks, we've seen that funerals are quite a common place for Ebola to spread. And that's because people are interacting with the body, preparing it for burial.
And I'm sure most of us remember the last Ebola outbreak, I think, started 2013. Can you tell us how bad did that get and how did they eventually manage to contain it?
more than 28,000 people were affected and more than 11,000 died. It spread across multiple countries.
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Chapter 7: How prepared is the DRC for an Ebola outbreak?
So that's a doubling in a matter of days.
Wow, so it's moved really quickly.
Absolutely.
This is the 17th recorded Ebola outbreak in DRC.
And then on Sunday, the World Health Organization declared a public health emergency of international concern.
Today, I have released 500,000 US dollars from WHO's contingency fund for emergencies to immediately support the response.
Right. So there are already cases in Uganda and there is one American patient who was working in the Democratic Republic of the Congo who has been flown to Germany. But where did all of this start in the DRC?
So almost all the cases are in the Ituri region of the DRC, which borders South Sudan, it borders Uganda.
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Chapter 8: What are the social and psychological impacts of Ebola on communities?
The kind of first case death was on April the 27th. And there were some local tests done around that time. The tests that were being used, they only pick up the Zaire strain. So the local officials doing those tests thought, this isn't Ebola.
Oh, I see.
They did send samples to the National Lab, which is why a few days later we found out actually, no, it is this other strain, the Bundibugio strain.
Right. So a lot of time is wasted because they were looking for the wrong strain of Ebola. And this is a rarer kind that currently has no vaccine.
Yeah, so this is a really interesting element of potentially why it took a bit longer than ideal to raise the alarm.
Could you give us an idea of where this outbreak is occurring, what is the health capacity in those areas where these cases are spreading?
It's a very remote area. So I've been talking to people and they say, you know, it takes us five days to get from Kinshasa to this area. It's a conflict affected area. So there are rival militias kind of vying for control in the area. The conflict in the area has displaced people.
thousands of people you know over the last year it's also an area where there's a lot of mining activity so you get a lot of people moving around they come there for work and then maybe they go home so it's A place where maybe it's quite good conditions for a virus to spread because people might get infected and then they're moving around.
Right. In terms of this being a place where people are experiencing conflict, they're being displaced, I imagine also... That might prevent people seeking treatment or making the journey to a local healthcare facility as well, if they're concerned about security.
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