The UN has announced further confirmed Ebola cases in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, near the Ugandan border.
UNICEF has stepped up vaccinations in areas around the confirmed cases, and has launched a community-based response that includes water, sanitation and hygiene activities, community education, and psycho-social assistance to patients and their families.
14 September 2018: The UN has announced further confirmed Ebola cases in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has stepped up vaccinations in areas around the confirmed cases, and has launched a community-based response that includes water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) activities, community education, and psycho-social assistance. UNICEF has also engaged anthropologists to ensure that community concerns are understood and health messages are conveyed effectively.
UNICEF’s community-based approach to containing the spread of the disease includes giving psycho-social assistance to patients and their families, providing mobile phones to community leaders to facilitate early reporting, and launching sensitization campaigns through local media and religious leaders.
The recent Ebola cases were confirmed in the city of Butembo, a city of one million people near the Ugandan border in eastern DRC. On 13 September 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced 137 Ebola cases and 92 deaths in the east of the country.
SDG target 3.3 calls for ending epidemics of communicable diseases by 2030, and target 3.d aims to strengthen the capacity of all countries for early warning, risk reduction, and management of national and global health risks. [UN Press Release] [UNICEF Press Release] [SDG Knowledge Hub Story on Ebola Outbreak]