The Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) said on Thursday it is stepping up efforts to help countries across United States (US) to strengthen their preparedness for Ebola, although the risk of the disease remains low in the region.<\/p>\n
The agency has activated its incident management system and is working with health ministries to strengthen surveillance, testing and infection control, so countries can rapidly detect and manage cases.<\/p>\n
PAHO is preparing shipments of materials and reagents for molecular \u200bdetection of Bundibugyo ebolavirus to selected countries with appropriate biosafety \u200bcapacity, based on risk assessments, it said.<\/p>\n
A rare strain of Ebola known as Bundibugyo has prompted the World Health Organisation (WHO) to declare a \u200bpublic health emergency of international concern.<\/p>\n
The Democratic Republic of \u200bCongo (DRC) has reported 344 confirmed cases and 60 confirmed deaths, along with \u200c116 \u2060suspected cases under investigation.<\/p>\n
Confirmed cases have been reported in several provinces, including Ituri, North Kivu and South Kivu. Uganda has reported 15 confirmed cases, including one death.<\/p>\n
“Even with low \u200brisk, countries must \u200bbe ready \u2060to detect and respond quickly to any possible importation to protect health workers and communities, \u200band to prevent further transmission,” said Dr. Ciro \u200bUgarte, \u2060director of health emergencies at PAHO.<\/p>\n
The agency is also facilitating international collaboration to ensure timely laboratory analysis through the referral \u2060of \u200bsamples to specialised regional laboratories.<\/p>\n
PAHO also \u200breiterated that countries should strengthen preparedness systems without imposing restrictions on travel or \u200btrade.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u2014Reuters\u2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":35189,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[26],"class_list":["post-36289","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Confirmed cases have been reported in several provinces, including Ituri, North Kivu and South Kivu.","published_date":"","news_description":"Confirmed cases have been reported in several provinces, including Ituri, North Kivu and South Kivu.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/36289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/36289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36290,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/36289\/revisions\/36290"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=36289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}