World Health Organization workers in conjunction with the government are working to stop the spread of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo.It is currently supplying vaccines, protective gear as well as helping set up mobile clinics.
According to WHO emergency preparedness and response officer Peter Salama,”We were able to advance within a few hours 2 million dollars to start the response to supply basic protective equipment to the teams on the ground to get to Mbandaka and Bikoro. We were about to advance international emergency health kits and we were able to set up mobile laboratory.”
The Ebola outbreak was originally declared in the remote region of Bikoro.Cases were then reported in Mbandaka, an urban city with a population of around 1 point 2 million people.The city is also used as way to access the capital city of Kinshasa, and other countries.
“We are also scaling up the response in terms of the region. There are nine countries that we rated at high risk, they are the neighboring countries of the DRC. And we are working to deploy a team to each of the countries, so each of those countries is prepared well, and particularly with the first priority of the Central African Republic and the Republic of Congo.”,said Salama
So far there have been at least 31 confirmed cases of Ebola and 22 deaths in the DRC
