Race against Time as Deadly Ebola Spreads to Uganda’s Border

By Virginia Mwangi

Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) health ministry has embarked on using the experimental mAb114 Ebola treatment on patients in North Kivu Province, East of the country.

This has come in the wake of the virus spreading to the second province and is the first time it has been put to use to curb an active outbreak.

Congo’s health ministry said, on Tuesday, that a man who was treated for a heart attack in Mangina, where the outbreak had been declared on 1st August, returned home to Mandima in Ituri province, just across the border, where he passed and tests carried on the body have since confirmed he died of Ebola.

The Country’s health ministry has reported 57 cases of hemorrhagic fever with 30 of them confirmed as Ebola and 27 cases termed as probable Ebola cases. Out of an overall of 41 reported deaths, 14 have already been confirmed as Ebola.

The mAb114 treatment, by the National Institutes of Health, was developed in the United States (US) by using antibodies of an Ebola survivor during an outbreak in the western Congolese city of Kikwit in 1995.

The treatment was 100 percent effective when it was put to test on monkeys.

The ministry added that other experimental treatments have arrived in Beni and are awaiting approval from the ethics committee.

The ministry said that the outbreak response is facing challenges since there is a heavy presence of armed groups in the densely populated region that borders Uganda.

Ebola is said to spread through large droplets only when a person is very sick. Contact with surfaces or objects contaminated by the virus, especially needles and syringes, could also transmit the deadly infection.