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REX/ACTION PRESS
World News

Christians urged to pray for containment of Ebola in DRC

by Eno Adeogun

Medair UK warned "containment is vital" to stop Ebola spreading from the DR Congo to neighbouring countries Uganda and Rwanda.

Neil Casey, a Christian from the charity told Premier: "First and foremost we want to pray that this Ebola outbreak is contained.

 

"We all have memories of the Ebola outbreak across Sierra Leone and Guinee and the neighbouring countries and we know the devastation that that caused."

The DR Congo's government has confirmed the outbreak has spread into a neighbouring province, as health workers began using an experimental treatment for the disease.

The health ministry is hoping the mAb114 therapy, isolated from an Ebola survivor from 1995, will be effective in a new outbreak which has killed 49 people since the start of the month.

The director-general of the World Health Organisation, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said five patients have been given the treatment.

Casey told Premier how the disease may be spreading: "There's a lot of forest areas and the theory goes that people are exposed to infected meat - they eat infected meat and that then gives that cross infection from that meat to humans."

The outbreak spread from North Kivu province into neighbouring Ituri province in the DR Congo's turbulent north-east, when a man who had been treated for heart problems in Mangina, where the outbreak was declared August 1, returned home, the health ministry said.

He has since died, and tests confirmed he had Ebola.

Vaccinations began last week in Mangina and Beni, the major town about 18 miles away where Ebola treatment centres have been set up.

Seven of the nearly 75 health workers in Mangina have been infected, Dr Tedros said. More than 200 health workers have been vaccinated, along with 20 residents in the Beni region.

There are 3,000 vaccine doses in the DR Congo.

Listen to Neil Casey speaking with Premier's Cara Bentley:

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