Doctors Without Borders (MSF) yesterday called for the far-ranging use of vaccination in the war against Ebola in DR Congo that is still a deadly threat to lives there.
My last post on June 26, 2019 had mentioned 1,506 deaths – new figures released by the health ministry on Thursday said that 1,698 people have died since the outbreak was declared last August 01.
Joanne Liu (right), the international president of the medical charity known by its French acronym MSF, told AFP that health officials needed a “reality check” in their response to the unrelenting outbreak.
On Wednesday, the World Health Organization had declared Ebola a “public health emergency of international concern” – a designation reserved for the gravest of epidemics – and Liu has come out to urge for broader immunization.
That is a “great, cost-effective way of doing things when you have real contact tracing of people but we are not in that scenario”, she pointed out.
“We are not able to follow up everybody”, she grimly noted.
Liu referred to the difficulties of tracing contacts in North Kivu and Ituri provinces of eastern DRC, which are plagued by the twin demons of chronic insecurity and poor transport.
Instead of a targeted vaccination approach, “we should have a geographical approach, meaning that if someone is infected coming from (a) village, we would not only vaccinate the contacts and the contacts of contacts, we would vaccinate the whole village”, she suggested.
So far, doctors have used a so-called ring vaccination strategy, which focuses on protecting a circle of people who have been in contact with Ebola patients.
Already, WHO had acknowledged a “shortage of supply of rVSV-ZEBOV vaccine” despite “commendable efforts” by manufacturer Merck to double supplies by 2020. [Note: The Merck vaccine may have been widely deployed, but in regulatory terms, it is still unlicensed].
Still, that did not prevent Liu from expressing her concern that there “has been a lot of opacity” regarding available stocks of the vaccine, which is being used for the first time and has proven effective.
She said aloud: “We are told it is between 250,000 to 500,000 doses. So great, if we have that, but then where are they? When will they be available? We need much more transparency and clarity about the status of vaccine supply today”.
I agree. The drug should be made available where the need is most critical. And that need is in DR Congo.
Until Liu’s suggestion is taken up, we can expect more Ebola deaths.
Yesterday, I was at the Standard Chartered GBS Toastmasters meeting in Wisma LYL in Seksyen 51A in Petaling Jaya, Selangor – all because of a flurry of WhatsApp messages between Kingston Lee and I.
Lee had requested me to be an Evaluator for an Advanced speech – and of course, I obliged. And it turned out that I was given a speaking slot too!
I delivered my project speech #6 from the Competent Communication manual titled Unstoppable – the topic was provided by JP Celestino when he told me the good news and that he was more than happy to evaluate me.
It’s kinda neat because I evaluated his A Dramatic Talk speech and he, in turn, evaluated my Vocal Variety speech. A nice, pat arrangement.
BTW, that was for my CC manual, Round #59:
No comments:
Post a Comment