KINSHASA, Congo - Congo's health minister called for more help Wednesday in combatting an outbreak of the Ebola virus, which has killed at least five people in the first major outbreak in 12 years.
A team of experts from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta has arrived in southeastern Congo to back up local medical and health personnel, Health Minister Makwenge Kaput said in an interview. But he said Congo needs more aid to contain the crisis.
"We have personnel, but we need to reinforce them...we need to keep up the fight in the field," Kaput said in Kinshasa after a visit to the affected area.
"There is a need for doctors, epidemiologists, nurses...so we can isolate all the suspect cases there are on the ground."
On Tuesday, the World Health Organization issued a similar appeal for more doctors and other experts to travel to southeastern Congo to combat the outbreak. The government has quarantined the affected area.
Spokesperson Kelly Keith confirmed hemorrhagic fever experts at Canada's National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg have been following the situation and are prepared to deploy a team to the area if requested.
Experts from the Winnipeg laboratory - which is part of the Public Health Agency of Canada - are often tapped by WHO's Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network to help contain these types of outbreaks.
The special pathogens team has developed a portable lab that can be safely operated in remote locations with few resources. Being able to accurately identify cases early has been critical to containment efforts, because the initial symptoms of hemorrhagic fevers are similar to those of other diseases which commonly strike in affected areas.
Ebola quickly kills up to 90 per cent of those infected through massive blood loss and has no cure or treatment. It is spread through direct contact with the blood or secretions of an infected person, or objects that have been contaminated with infected secretions.
WHO said five samples in Congo have tested positive for Ebola. About 40 more samples still are pending.
At least 167 people have died in the affected region over the last four months and nearly 400 have fallen ill, Congolese health officials said. But experts suspect many of the cases could be shigella, a diarrhea-like disease, or typhoid. At the early stages, both diseases have symptoms similar to Ebola.
Some of the patients have improved after being given antibiotics, which would have no impact on Ebola, WHO experts said.
Kaput said health authorities are seeing "fewer and fewer cases" of suspected Ebola but two more people may have contracted the virus in Kananga, 100 kilometres to the southeast, from a businessman who travelled there from Mweka.
Congo's last major Ebola outbreak struck in Kikwit in 1995, killing 245 people. Kikwit is about 300 kilometres from the site of the current outbreak.
WHO said more than 1,000 people have died of Ebola since the virus was first identified in 1976 in Sudan and Congo. Primates, hunted by many central Africans for food, can carry the virus.
