The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention warned Saturday that 10 African countries are at risk from the worsening Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. Africa CDC Director General Jean Kaseya named Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, the Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Zambia as facing potential exposure. Africa CDC and the World Health Organization are seeking more than $314 million in emergency funding to fight the outbreak.
The warning came after the WHO raised its risk assessment for DRC to “very high” on Friday, citing nearly 750 suspected cases and 177 suspected deaths in the country.
In neighboring Uganda, five cases have been confirmed in people who traveled from DRC. The most recent include a Ugandan driver, a Ugandan health worker who cared for the country’s first confirmed patient, and a Congolese woman who traveled through Uganda by chartered flight and sought care at a Kampala hospital before returning home. The announcement came as the U.S. pledged $23 million to help with the crisis response in DRC and Uganda.
Earlier this week, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was “deeply concerned about the scale and speed” of the outbreak and declared it a public health emergency.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has temporarily banned travel to the United States for people without American passports who have been in DRC, South Sudan or Uganda in the past three weeks.
The CDC also confirmed that an American doctor working in DRC, identified as Peter Stafford, had tested positive for Ebola and was taken to Germany for treatment. Six other U.S. citizens have been exposed.
A Christian missionary group that Stafford works with reported on Thursday that he was “critically ill but not acutely deteriorating.” Stafford’s wife, who is also a doctor, and their four children are asymptomatic and quarantining in Germany as a precaution, the group said.
Follow the latest updates below.
