ReliefWeb

Overview

This Weekly Bulletin focuses on selected acute public health emergencies occurring in the WHO African Region. The WHO Health Emergencies Programme is currently monitoring 58 events in the region. This week’s edition covers key new and ongoing events, including:

• Anthrax in Tanzania
• Circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 in Mozambique
• Ebola virus disease in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
• Lassa fever in Nigeria
• Humanitarian crisis in Cameroon.

For each of these events, a brief description, followed by public health measures implemented and an interpretation of the situation is provided.

A table is provided at the end of the bulletin with information on all new and ongoing public health events currently being monitored in the region, as well as recent events that have largely been controlled and thus closed.

Major issues and challenges include:

The Ebola virus disease outbreak in north-east Democratic Republic of the Congo remains challenging in the face of insecurity, pockets of community reluctance and high population mobility. Response measures were disrupted in Katwa (during the week) as a result of civil protest as well as security incidents. Such incidences severely retard the effectiveness of the outbreak control interventions. By using proven public health measures and newer tools at hand, under the government’s leadership and working collaboratively across agencies, WHO is committed to addressing these challenges and ending the outbreak.

Mozambique has confirmed a new outbreak of circulating vaccinederived poliovirus type 2 (cVDPV2). This event comes barely two years since a case was confirmed in January 2017. The detection of cVDPV2s underscores the importance of maintaining high coverage of poliocontaining vaccines everywhere in the African Region to minimize the risk and consequences of any poliovirus circulation.