Ebola Outbreak in Congo Has South Sudan on High Alert, UN Says
- Screenings, training and vaccines prepared in case of spread
- Neighboring nation is battling world’s second-worst outbreak
A health worker carries a four-day-old baby suspected of having Ebola, into a MSF (Doctors Without Borders) supported Ebola Treatment Center in Butembo, Democratic Republic of the Congo on Nov. 4, 2018.
Photographer: John Wessels/AFP via Getty Images
The United Nations and South Sudan are taking extreme precautions to prevent any spread of Ebola from neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, which is battling the second-biggest ever outbreak of the disease.
The UN and local authorities have made “a huge number of preparatory steps,” including border-screenings, training health teams and bringing in vaccines for health-workers on the front-lines, the head of the UN mission in South Sudan, David Shearer, said Tuesday in an interview. An outbreak of the virus in Congo’s restive east has killed almost 300 people since August.