| Apparently we don’t worry about Ebola anymore, but here is an update anyway. |
"Since the start of the epidemic, the total number of cases stands at 2,008, of which 1,914 have been confirmed [by lab test] while 94 are probable," it said in an update.
"In all, there have been 1,346 deaths (1,252 confirmed and 94 probable) and 539 people have recovered."
The ministry said it was important to retain the overall perspective, despite the breaching of the symbolic threshold of 2,000 cases.
"In recent weeks, the trend has been positive, although vigilance is still necessary," it said.
There have been fewer attacks on Ebola teams by gangs, which means health workers have "recovered some of the lost time to contain the spread of the epidemic," it said.
The epidemic was first declared in North Kivu province on August 1 and then spread to neighbouring Ituri, although there have not been any cases in neighbouring countries.
Efforts to tackle the crisis have been hampered both by militia attacks on treatment centres, in which some staff have been killed, and by the hostility of some local people to the medical teams.
The outbreak is the 10th in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
...formerly the Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Zaire, and who knows what else, not to be confused with the Brazzaville Congo aka Republic of Congo, which is much smaller and much more (for Africa) stable. DRC gave the world Patrice Lumumba and Joseph Mobutu, followed by years of tedious civil war. Its principle industry seems to be the production of corpses. With a population of about 74 million it has lots of raw material...
since the disease was identified in 1976.
| Since it hasn’t become a worldwide pandemic, or even properly epidemic, the lack of hysteria is understandable. |