Pathfinder
Editor, Senior Moderator
Interview
Q&A: Congo Ebola outbreak at critical juncture, says top WHO official
Peter Salama points to a ?paradigm shift? in response, but warns the virus could still spread to blind spots or across national borders
31 August 2018
Anthony Morland
Africa Editor
...
IRIN: Do you have a full picture of the extent of this outbreak?
Peter Salama: I?d characterise our picture as fairly comprehensive, one month in. The major additional variable and complicating factor is the fact that it's taking place in an area that is highly volatile, from a security perspective. There are one million displaced people, out of the population of eight million of northern Kivu. Many of the areas to the east of the epicentre of major areas of operation are classified in the UN as security level four [red zones], and many of those areas are real blind spots because of the conflict in northern Kivu. There are no health workers, no health facilities. And so there's no real reliable source of information to give us the alerts of any potential suspected cases. But? I don't think we're missing any large cluster of cases in the area of northern Kivu because we have a large number of people and such a lot of outreach, such a lot of contacts with people at all levels from the community. It is entirely possible in the areas of highest insecurity however, we are missing a small number of cases somewhere.
...
IRIN: Looking ahead, what are the best- and worst-case scenarios?
PS: The best-case scenario is that over the coming seven to 10 days, we'll see that epi-curve really begin to tail off, and there's some promising data to suggest that in the last few days... So we limit the outbreak to its current geographical confines.
The worst-case scenario is that we see either cases across borders of Uganda, Rwanda, most concerningly South Sudan, which has very little infrastructure to deal with it, or Burundi, and we see cases in those very difficult to access security areas, [including] that far eastern hinterland close to the DRC-Ugandan border, on the DRC side.
...
http://www.irinnews.org/interview/2...break-critical-juncture-says-top-who-official
Q&A: Congo Ebola outbreak at critical juncture, says top WHO official
Peter Salama points to a ?paradigm shift? in response, but warns the virus could still spread to blind spots or across national borders
31 August 2018
Anthony Morland
Africa Editor
...
IRIN: Do you have a full picture of the extent of this outbreak?
Peter Salama: I?d characterise our picture as fairly comprehensive, one month in. The major additional variable and complicating factor is the fact that it's taking place in an area that is highly volatile, from a security perspective. There are one million displaced people, out of the population of eight million of northern Kivu. Many of the areas to the east of the epicentre of major areas of operation are classified in the UN as security level four [red zones], and many of those areas are real blind spots because of the conflict in northern Kivu. There are no health workers, no health facilities. And so there's no real reliable source of information to give us the alerts of any potential suspected cases. But? I don't think we're missing any large cluster of cases in the area of northern Kivu because we have a large number of people and such a lot of outreach, such a lot of contacts with people at all levels from the community. It is entirely possible in the areas of highest insecurity however, we are missing a small number of cases somewhere.
...
IRIN: Looking ahead, what are the best- and worst-case scenarios?
PS: The best-case scenario is that over the coming seven to 10 days, we'll see that epi-curve really begin to tail off, and there's some promising data to suggest that in the last few days... So we limit the outbreak to its current geographical confines.
The worst-case scenario is that we see either cases across borders of Uganda, Rwanda, most concerningly South Sudan, which has very little infrastructure to deal with it, or Burundi, and we see cases in those very difficult to access security areas, [including] that far eastern hinterland close to the DRC-Ugandan border, on the DRC side.
...
http://www.irinnews.org/interview/2...break-critical-juncture-says-top-who-official