WHO: Ebola outbreak in DR Congo collides with conflict and hunger


The UN World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday warned that eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo faces a “catastrophic collision of disease and conflict” as a fast-spreading Ebola outbreak outpaces containment efforts in a region already battered by armed violence, mass displacement and acute hunger.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the Ebola Bundibugyo virus outbreak in Ituri province was spreading in an environment where insecurity, attacks on health facilities and population movements were making it “nearly impossible” to trace contacts and isolate cases.

Read more…
Source: United Nations News


Sign up for the Counter-IED Report Newsletters
The latest news and insights delivered right to your inbox


Related:

  • A closer look at Congo’s Islamist rebels

    September 30, 2020

    Since the start of 2019, more than 1,000 civilians have been killed in and around eastern Congo’s Beni region. These atrocities — which U.N. monitors have said may be war crimes — are the latest in periodic waves of massacres in the area since late 2014. This violence followed the start of a large-scale Congolese army ...

  • Mine Action in The Democratic Republic of the Congo: Completion of demining operations

    February 22, 2018

    Humanity & Inclusion (which operates under the name Handicap International in the DRC) has completed its demining operations in the Tshopo, Ituri, Bas-Uele and Haut-Uele provinces of Democratic Republic of the Congo. From January 2016 to December 2017, HI and its local partner, Africa for Anti-Mine Action (AFRILAM) cleared 34,520 meters of land of mines, ...

  • Mechem making a mark with demining in Turkey

    October 18, 2017

    Mechem demining teams lifted more than 23 000 landmines over an eight-month period on Turkey’s eastern border – a task regarded as one of the most significant achievements yet in the field of humanitarian demining. Each of the potentially deadly devices was detected and removed by hand at a rate of more than 200 a day. ...