The country's Ministry of Health said in a series of tweets that a sick pastor arrived in the city from Butembo by bus Sunday. The virus first struck Butembo, a city of more than a 100,000 people, last September.
The risk of the disease spreading in Goma is low, the ministry said, because the patient was quickly isolated and transferred to an Ebola treatment center.
The ministry said the bus driver and the 18 other passengers will be vaccinated on Monday.
"While not welcome news, it is something we have long anticipated," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, said on Twitter. "We have been doing intensive work to prepare Goma so that any case is identified and responded to immediately."
In another post, Ghebreyesus tweeted that the Ebola Treatment Center in Goma, which is run by the DRC Ministry of Health and Doctors without Borders, has been operational since February.
"As part of the preparedness, 3000 #healthworkers have been vaccinated in this city alone," he tweeted.
The ongoing outbreak in DRC, in which more than 1,600 people have died, is the second largest Ebola outbreak in history. Mistrust in the medical agencies and the government contributed to the spread of the outbreak, because people weren't getting treatment, staying at home and dying. Their bodies were still highly contagious and deadly for the family members who buried them.
The largest Ebola outbreak began in West Africa in 2014, and has killed more than 11,000 people.
No comments:
Post a Comment