The Ebola outbreak is posing massive challenges for medical aid organizations, a senior humanitarian official has said. Kate White, a program manager for the charity M\u00e9decins Sans Fronti\u00e8res (MSF) who is flying out to the Democratic Republic of Congo, expressed extreme concern about the inability to get resources<\/b> to the country. Three Red Cross volunteers who died earlier this month were among the first known victims of DR Congo’s Ebola outbreak, likely contracting it while managing deceased bodies. The outbreak has resulted in more than 200 suspected deaths and over 850 suspected cases<\/b>. White, who flew from Manchester Airport on Sunday as part of an international relief effort, emphasized: “It really reinforces the need to ensure that we have all of the protective measures in place.” The World Health Organization (WHO) recently stated the disease may be spreading faster than originally thought and has declared a public health emergency of international concern. Currently, there is no approved vaccine for this outbreak<\/b>, though experimental ones are in development. There are also no specific drugs that target the virus, making the illness harder to treat. White, from York, who has worked on previous Ebola epidemics in Africa, remarked: “Considering how many years we have been seeing these outbreaks and we still don’t have comprehensive medical countermeasures [treatment, vaccines, rapidly deployable diagnostic testing], it says something about the state of the world right now.” She added that she was also concerned about the impact of closing airspace on transporting healthcare workers and resources to affected areas. “The sheer volume of what we need to get in right now is massive.” Improvements in the ability to confirm cases were required “across all of the geographic areas where it’s impacting because we don’t want people stuck in treatment centers if they don’t have it,” she stated. “We want to be able to discharge them as soon as they recover so they can go back to their families, and we’re not there yet.” Ebola is a rare but deadly disease caused by a virus. Ebola viruses normally infect animals, but human outbreaks can sometimes begin when people eat or handle infected animals. Symptoms typically appear within two to 21 days, coming on suddenly and mimicking flu or malaria, with fever, headache, and tiredness. As the disease progresses, vomiting and diarrhea develop, potentially leading to organ failure. Some, but not all, patients experience internal and external bleeding. The virus spreads from person to person through contact with infected bodily fluids such as blood or vomit. Ebola outbreaks traditionally were small and confined to remote rural areas. However, urbanization is now pushing larger populations closer to these natural reservoirs of Ebola, increasing the risk of transmission. “This outbreak has been ongoing for a significant period before it was detected, meaning we don’t fully understand the chains of transmission,” White added. “When we don’t fully understand that, it becomes much more difficult to get it under control.”<\/p>\n
#EbolaOutbreak #DRCongo #PublicHealthEmergency #MedicalAid #MSF #WHO #GlobalHealth #DiseaseControl #HumanitarianCrisis #EbolaResponse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ebola Outbreak Poses Massive Challenges The Ebola outbreak is posing massive challenges for medical aid organizations, a senior humanitarian official has said. Kate White, a program manager for the charity M\u00e9decins Sans Fronti\u00e8res (MSF) who is flying out to the Democratic Republic of Congo, expressed extreme concern about the inability to get resources to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9520,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vanak.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vanak.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vanak.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vanak.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vanak.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vanak.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vanak.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vanak.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vanak.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vanak.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}