Congo Declares End of Ebola Outbreak

The Democratic Republic of Congo recently announced the end of the 12th outbreak of Ebola. 6 people died in the eastern province of North Kivu due to Ebola.

Ebola Outbreak

• The current Ebola outbreak was genetically linked to the outbreak that occurred in 2018–20.
  
  
• Currently, Guinea is also fighting against the Ebola epidemic.
  
  
• The Ebola virus was discovered in 1976. The Ebola outbreak of 2014–16 is the largest Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
  
  
• In June 2019, the World Health Organization declared it as a global health emergency in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Global Health Emergency

A global health emergency is declared when an outbreak of the disease can also pose a threat to other countries. This requires a coordinated international response.

Ebola Virus

• The Ebola virus has reached people from wild animals. It spreads among human populations through human-to-human.
  
  
• The natural hosts of this Ebola virus are fruit bats.
  
  
• The methods used to diagnose Ebola are ELISA, Serum neutralization test, electron microscopy, virus isolation by cell culture, reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), antigen capture detection tests.
  
  
• Ebola has a mortality rate of 50%.

In 2019, WHO declared Ebola one of the top ten threats to global health. Other threats were non-communicable diseases, air pollution, climate change, global influenza epidemics, anti-microbial resistance, weak health care, HIV, vaccine hesitation, etc.

Ebola vaccines

• rVSV-ZEBOV is an Ebola vaccine which was used in 2015 in Guinea.
  
  
• It was also used during the 2018–19 Ebola outbreak in the Congo.

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