Ebola outbreak in COngo – USA Gov Policy

According to the United Nations, almost 600 children have now lost their lives to the Ebola outbreak in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) out of almost 850 who have caught the deadly virus since the epidemic started in August 2018. More children, proportionately, are being affected than in any previous Ebola outbreak.

The total number of deaths has now passed 2,000, out of more than 3,000 cases.

The recent breakthrough in finding a successful treatment for this disease, and the continued effectiveness of vaccination efforts to prevent transmission and infection, mean that, for the first time, there is an ability to both prevent and treat Ebola. The U.N. notes, however, that these breakthroughs “mean little if individuals are too scared to seek treatment, or too slow to spot symptoms.” The Mayo Clinic . notes that the Ebola virus disease is not transmitted through the air and does not spread through casual contact, such as being near an infected person. Unlike respiratory illnesses, which can spread by particles that remain in the air after an infected person coughs or sneezes, Ebola is spread by direct contact with body fluids of a person who is sick with Ebola.

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The Medicine Without Borders (MSF) (Médecins Sans Frontières, an independent international medical humanitarian organisation that delivers emergency aid to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, healthcare exclusion and natural or man-made disasters) found that “During the first eight months of the epidemic, until March 2019, more than 1,000 cases of Ebola were reported in the affected region. However, between April and June 2019, this number doubled, with a further 1,000 new cases reported in just those three months. Between early June and the beginning of August, the number of new cases notified per week was high, and averaged between 75 and 100 each week; since August, this rate has slowly declined, but the number of new cases are still averaging just under 50 per week.”

According to MSF, “There is considerable difficulty in identifying and following up contacts of people diagnosed with Ebola. Over the last three months, only a third of new Ebola cases were identified and monitored as contacts of previously confirmed cases; two-thirds of contacts were never followed-up with by the surveillance teams. People continue to die in their communities, undiagnosed, untreated.”

The problem has spread into another regional nation. MSF noted that in June, Uganda announced that three people had been positively diagnosed with Ebola, the first cross-border cases since the outbreak began. After several weeks with no recorded cases, the Ugandan government announced a new case on 29 August. In July, the first case of Ebola was confirmed in Goma, the capital of North Kivu, and a city of one million people. Later that month, a second person in Goma was diagnosed with Ebola; they died the next day and two more cases were announced. No new cases have since been recorded in either Uganda or in Goma.

MSF states that “Unlike the 2014-2016 West Africa Outbreak, there now exists two vaccines against Ebola which are in clinical study phases and are not licenced. One, the rVSV-ZEBOV vaccine produced by Merck, has been used in a ‘ring’ vaccination strategy since the start of this year. Using this strategy – where the contacts of people diagnosed with Ebola are vaccinated (first-degree contacts), and their contacts (second-degree contacts) in turn are vaccinated – over 230,000 people have been vaccinated up to the end of September 2019. In late September 2019, the Ministry of Health announced plans to introduce a second investigational vaccine, produced by Johnson and Johnson.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced that the current Ebola outbreak in DR Congo represents a public health emergency of international concern.

Chart: MSF

Quick Analysis

Putin’s Saber Rattling

Earlier this week, President Biden reversed his 2022 decision, authorizing the provision of antipersonnel land mines to the Ukrainian government. It follows an earlier Administration authorization to allow the use of an advanced American missile system capable of striking as deep as 100 miles inside Russian territory. The US election season may be ending, but both Russia and the West show no indication of stepping down the conflict. Russian propaganda continues to swell as the Kremlin increases its threats to use nuclear weapons against the West. Last week Andrey Sushentsov, program director of the pro-Kremlin think tank Valdai Discussion Club (VDC), published an article on growing nuclear tensions in the region. Official Russian language in the last few years has been threatening. Since the US election, rhetoric like that in the Sushentsov article, has approached the level of nuclear blackmail. The VDC article’s main theme centers on Russia’s intent to directly confront the West militarily if the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) becomes involved in Russia’s conflict with Ukraine. “On the one hand, these threats are intended to frighten the West, but on the other, Russian propagandists themselves are starting to believe in the inevitability of escalation,” according to Ksenia Kirillova of the Jamestown Foundation. On November 11, Sushentsov wrote that “The conflict will reach a completely new level, with unpredictable consequences for Europe and the entire world.” Kirillova points out that Putin’s distorted image of the world is divorced from reality and is causing the Kremlin to issue demands that are impossible to fulfill. Financial and other Russian resources needed to support Putin’s war are growing scarcer at the same time. This week the Kremlin announced a reduction of payments to its soldiers. Recently North Korea acknowledged it was sending soldiers to fight in Ukraine as Putin is running out of bodies to use as cannon fire. The war is not going well for Russia. One question floating around the Washington intelligence community is whether Putin will act out of desperation before President-elect Trump assumes office. In recent months the Russian propaganda machine is spewing out materials from fairly reputable analytical platforms inside the country. Kirillova says that “Kremlin ‘experts’ do not conceal that such threats are only intended to break the West psychologically, as they themselves are not prepared for full-scale nuclear war.” Despite Russia’s lack of preparation for an all-out war with the West, the expanding nuclear rhetoric carries with it an increase in the threat of a full-scale war in multiple theaters of operation. In June 2023 a founder of the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, Sergey Karaganov, called for “delivering a pre-emptive strike of retaliation” on Poland to force the West to surrender. In the previous month, Dmitry Suslov, a direct of research programs at the policy center proposed organizing “a demonstration nuclear explosion” aimed at intimidating the West. In September, President Putin announced a reappraisal of Russian nuclear doctrine after speaking earlier in the year at the plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum and jokingly calling Suslov a “scary person.” Pavel Baev, writing in the European Daily Monitor, says “Putin intends his announcement to mark an escalation of nuclear brinkmanship and influence the proceedings of future Ukrainian peace efforts.” Putin is expanding the list of environmental conditions that are acceptable for using a nuclear weapon and incorporating it into Russian military doctrine. Baev adds that “The ups and downs of Russian brinkmanship are disconnected from the kinetic battles of the war, correlating instead with Ukrainian peace offensives, such as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s first peace summit in Bürgenstock, Switzerland.” Despite the increase in vitriolic language, in a You Tube video published a week before the US presidential election, Karaganov openly assured the West the primary goal of the escalation is to break the American spirit and that of the West, not outright nuclear war. By Election Day in the US, with political prognosticators predicting a win for former president Trump, Karaganov changed his tune and called for an increased role in nuclear deterrence. Kirillova points out that Western concessions to Russia are unlikely to reduce the risk of nuclear escalation. The distorted reality inside the Kremlin continues to push that President-elect Trump is an adherent of “world government,” that Ukraine will create a nuclear weapon, and Russia must prepare for a nuclear conflagration to achieve its ambitions for a new world order. President-elect Trump has indicated he will not agree to concessions that destabilize Europe, the Middle East or other regions. Going forward a strong US foreign policy may be the most stabilizing course the West can count on to restrain Putin and his intent to rebuild the Russian empire. Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept. Illustration: Pixabay

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