Attachments
This Weekly Bulletin focuses on public health emergencies occurring in the WHO African region. This week’s articles cover:
- Ebola Disease caused by Sudan virus in Uganda - Cholera in Ethiopia - Coronavirus disease in the WHO African Region
For each of these events, a brief description, followed by public health measures implemented and an interpretation of the situation is provided.
A table is provided at the end of the bulletin with information on all new and ongoing public health events currently being monitored in the region, as well as recent events that have been controlled and closed.
Major issues and challenges include:
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More than two months have passed since the first case of Ebola disease caused by Sudan virus was confirmed in Mubende District in Uganda, and no new case has been reported over the past 13 days. Although the transmission has indeed slowed down over the past three to four weeks, the response is still left with some challenges especially around contact tracing activities in Jinja where the contact follow-up rate remains below 75%. In addition, Emergency Medical Services Teams are currently experiencing difficulties to evacuate suspected cases from their communities, due to impassable roads resulting from heavy rains. Infection prevention and control (IPC) standards remain direly sub-optimal in health care facilities and there is lack of adherence to IPC measures by health care workers, added to limited IPC supplies both at facility and community levels. Moreover, the risk of disease resurgence from survivors remains of serious concern, as the survivors’ program is not yet fully operational.
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The ongoing cholera outbreak has continued to affect Ethiopia’s Oromia and Somali regions.
Various factors have made the situation worse including the practice of open defecation and lack of safe water in affected areas making it difficult to maintain adequate levels of sanitation.
A looming drought has exacerbated the situation further causing dehydration and nutrition problems for patients.