The Democratic Republic of Congo President Felix Tshisekedi on Friday said he believes the ongoing Ebola outbreak in the eastern part of the country should be eradicated by the end of 2019, reported Reuters.
During a news conference in Berlin alongside German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Tshisekedi said he hopes the Ebola epidemic would be stamped out by the end of the year. He said he is willing to work with any country interested in Congo’s vast natural resources, including China and Russia.
“There are still a few isolated cases in Ituri (province) but we think that by the end of the year we can completely stop that,” Tshisekedi said.
The Ebola outbreak started in August last year in North Kivu province before spreading to neighboring Ituri and South Kivu province, a remote and largely lawless region bordering Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi. More than 2 000 people have been killed so far in the outbreak, which the United Nations declared an international emergency in July.
It is the second Ebola outbreak deadliest on record after an outbreak that struck West Africa in 2014-16, claiming more than 11 300 lives. According to government data, the rate of new cases has fallen substantially in recent weeks.
The DRC health officials have introduced two vaccines to contain the outbreak, but public mistrust and armed conflict in eastern Congo have hampered the response.
Earlier this week, the World Health Organization approved the Merck Ebola Vaccine (Ervebo). The vaccine has been approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the European Commission.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director-general, called the approval of the vaccine is a historic step toward making sure people who need the vaccine most have access to it.
“Five years ago, we had no vaccine and no therapeutics for Ebola,” he said in a statement. “With a pre-qualified vaccine and experimental therapeutics, Ebola is now preventable and treatable.”
