Officials of the World Health Organization have said that a fishmonger who died this week of Ebola may have carried the virus from Congo into Rwanda as well as Uganda.
Health workers are now struggling to track down people the woman could have infected.
According to the WHO the woman vomited multiple times at Mpondwe, a market across the border in Uganda on July 11.
She died a few days later of Ebola in Congo but spent time at the same market, according to a report from Ugandan health ministry.
The Ugandan health ministry also said it suspects that, the woman visited the city of Goma and Gisenyi in Rwanda to do business.
This scenario creates a state of anxiety among Rwandans and Ugandans as the Ebola outbreak becomes a pubic health emergency.
Public health emergency
The World Health Organization on Wednesday declared the current Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo a public health emergency of international concern.
This is the second worst Ebola outbreak of all time, in DR Congo.
The decision to declare the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern has come months after the WHO refused to do so despite appeals from health experts.
The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has called for countries to ‘take notice and redouble our efforts”.
The W.H.O defines Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) as, “an extraordinary event which is determined to constitute a public health risk to other States through the international spread of disease and to potentially require a coordinated international response”.
So far, there have been more than 2,500 cases of infection.
Nearly 1,670 have died in the provinces of Ituri and North Kivu, where multiple armed groups and lack of local trust have hampered efforts to get the outbreak under control.
Source: Africafeeds.com
