“A deadly new Ebola outbreak” has killed dozens of people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, reports the Associated Press. 35 deaths and 57 cases have been reported since September 4, but there may be hundreds more cases in remote rural areas. The Associated Press says that
The fatality rate is over 61%….It is the first Ebola outbreak in 18 years in Kasai province, a remote part of Congo characterized by its poor road networks. It is located more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from the nation’s capital of Kinshasa….the only treatment center in the Bulape health zone, where the epicenter of the outbreak has been declared and the majority of cases are concentrated, is already at 119% capacity….
Treating Ebola demands “enormous resources,” even for a single patient, said Jean Paul Mbantshi, the chief medical officer of the Bulape health zone. He said the zone desperately needs ambulances to transport patients from remote areas to the hospital before they become highly contagious. Health workers also require more protective equipment, medicine, and additional vaccines….just 1,740 people in three health zones of Kasai province — Bulape, Bulambae and Mweka — have been vaccinated as of Sept. 21. The Bulape zone alone has a population of more than 212,000.
As Wikipedia explains, Ebola
is a viral hemorrhagic fever in humans and other primates, caused by ebolaviruses. Symptoms typically start anywhere between two days and three weeks after infection. The first symptoms are usually fever, sore throat, muscle pain, and headaches. These are usually followed by vomiting, diarrhoea, rash and decreased liver and kidney function, at which wich point some people begin to bleed both internally and externally. It kills between 25% and 90% of those infected – about 50% on average….An Ebola vaccine was approved by the US FDA in December 2019.
The virus spreads through direct contact with body fluids, such as blood from infected humans or other animals, or from contact with items that have recently been contaminated with infected body fluids. …After recovering from Ebola, semen or breast milk may continue to carry the virus for anywhere between several weeks to several months.[1][6][7] Fruit bats are believed to be the normal carrier in nature; they are able to spread the virus without being affected by it.
On the bright side, the African nation of Guinea recently eradicated sleeping sickness, a parasitic disease carried by the tsetse fly that causes irreversible brain damage, aggressiveness, psychosis, and then death, if left untreated.
Niger recently became the first nation in Africa to eliminate river blindness, a disease spread by flies that breed near rivers. Those flies carry long thin parasitic worms that burrow in a victim’s skin.
Vaccination has cut child deaths by two thirds in Burundi, which is the second poorest country on Earth in terms of annual income. People in Burundi have a per capita income of about $1,000, compared to $89,000 in the United States. (That $1,000 takes into account cheaper living costs in Burundi. If you don’t adjust for living costs, people in Burundi have an even lower per capita income of about $500).
