콩고에서 재발한 에볼라 바이러스를 주목해야 합니다!
Between 2014 and 2016, an Ebola outbreak in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone infected at least 28,000 people and killed more than 11,000.
에볼라 바이러스의 발병은 2014년과 2016년 사이에 아프리카의 기니, 라이베리아, 시에라리온에서 최소한 28,000명을 감염시켜 무려 11,000명 이상을 죽였습니다.
치사율이 50%에 육박하는 에볼라는 인류에게 대재앙이 될수 있습니다.
이에 더불어 2015년 우리나라로 전파된바 있는 메르스 바이러스가 최근 중동국가인 카타르에서 재발하여 사망자가 증가하고 있습니다.
지구온난화로 빙하 속에 묻혀 있는 각종 바이러스와 세균이 속속 깨어나고 있다고 우려합니다.
펜데믹은 반드시 올것입니다.
미리미리 준비하고 대비합시다!
국내 모든 대형병원(거점 병원 포함)은 반드시 전체 병원 공기를 24시간 7일 내내 지속적으로 살균해야만 합니다.
관계법령의 미비와 헛점으로 대부분의 대형 병원들이 공기살균을 무시하고, 별것도 아니라고 생각합니다.
메르스가 찾아 왔을때 허둥지둥하는 모습을 똑똑히 보아온 관계당국도 형편없는 착각에 빠져 있습니다.
펜데믹이 찾아오면 그때가서 발병된 환자들을 격리하고 치료하는 것도 중요하지만 더 중요한 것은 예방입니다.
Ebola Returns: What You Need to Know About the Outbreak in Congo
By on 5/15/17 at 9:24 AM
Ebola Virus Is Now More Infectious
Ebola Is Back
WorldDemocratic Republic of CongoCongoEbola
A year after the deadliest Ebola outbreak ever in Africa, the virus has returned. The World Health Organization (WHO) announced Saturday that an outbreak of Ebola in the far north of the country had been declared by Congo’s health minister.
Congo was not one of the three countries involved in the 2014-2016 outbreak—Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone—which killed more than 11,000 people, but the country has had several Ebola epidemics in the past.
Here’s what you need to know about the latest outbreak.
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How big is the outbreak?
There have been 17 suspected cases and two confirmed cases of Ebola in Congo’s Bas-Uele province, the WHO’s Congo spokesman Eugene Kabambi told Reuters Sunday. Of the 19, three deaths have been reported. Kabambi added that health officials were trying to located 125 people believed to be linked to the cases.
How did it start?
It is not clear yet how the first victim—a man who has since died—caught the virus. But this outbreak is not the first in Congo; the country has suffered seven prior epidemics of the virus since 1976, when the first ever Ebola outbreaks occurred simultaneously in the northern village of Yambuku in Congo and in Sudan.
The virus is thought to circulate in several animal populations—including fruit bats, chimpanzees and monkeys—in Central Africa, and several previous outbreaks in Congo have been linked to the consumption of infected animals. A 2012 outbreak in northeast Congo killed 36 people and was blamed on tainted bushmeat.
Once in the human population, Ebola is transmitted via direct contact with the bodily secretions of infected people. Healthcare workers are at heightened risk of the disease, while outbreaks have also been associated with burial practices that involve handling bodies. A 2007 outbreak in Congo killed 183 people, many of whom had attended the funeral of a local chief.
What is the risk of it spreading?
Health authorities are hoping that the remoteness of the region where the cases have occurred may help to slow the spread of the virus. The outbreak was declared in a small town, Aketi, that lies more than 800 miles from the densely populated capital Kinshasa and 81 miles from the provincial hub of Buta.
Kabambi, the WHO Congo spokesman, told Reuters that the first case had occurred in “a very remote zone, very forested, so we are a little lucky.” But that same remoteness could make it difficult for health authorities to reach potential victims—Aketi is inaccessible by four-wheel drive and responders would likely have to travel by motorcycle—and the Base-Uele province borders Central African Republic, raising the possibility of a cross-border epidemic.
Will it be as bad as the West African outbreak?
Congolese authorities appear reasonably confident that the outbreak will not escalate to the scale of the recent West African outbreak, which killed thousands across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. That outbreak— which ended in early 2016 as Liberia was declared free of active transmission—was the first in West Africa, while Congo has experience of fighting the virus over decades.
The last Ebola outbreak in Congo, in 2014, was over within four months and killed 49 people; the West African outbreak, by contrast, took two years to contain. The country “abounds in human resources” that have served to “contain similar epidemics” at other times, said Congolese health minister Dr. Oly Ilunga Kalenga in a statement sent to the WHO Saturday.
What happens next?
While it appears unlikely that the situation in Congo will be anywhere near as deadly as the 2014 West African outbreak, health authorities are taking nothing for granted.
The WHO, which was slammed by health experts for being too slow to declare the West Africa outbreak as a public health emergency, has deployed its Africa director to Kinshasa to coordinate a response with Congolese health officials, while charities including Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) have also offered their assistance.
One potentially game-changing development since the 2014 outbreak is the availability of an experimental vaccine that has shown a high degree of effectiveness in fighting the virus. Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, has said that 300,000 doses of the vaccine are available to be sent to Congo should the WHO and the country’s health authorities determine a mass inoculation program is required.
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