Enlarge / A health worker puts on protective gear as he prepares to screen travelers at the Mpondwe Health Screening Facility in the Ugandan border town of Mpondwe as they cross over from the Democratic Republic of Congo, on June 13, 2019. (credit: Getty | Isaac Kasamani)
US and UK government officials are warning travelers of the possibility of a concealed Ebola outbreak in Tanzania after the World Health Organization reported that the government there is withholding information about possible cases of the deadly virus.
On September 21, the WHO released an unusual statement outlining a series of unofficial reports from the country. The first was that a doctor who had recently traveled to Uganda had returned to Tanzania with a “suspected” case of Ebola. Testing performed by the Tanzanian National Health Laboratory reportedly indicated that the doctor was positive for the virus. She died September 8 in Dar es Salaam, the largest city in Tanzania, after traveling extensively throughout the country. Subsequent unofficial reports to the WHO indicated that there were several other suspected cases as well as contacts in quarantine in various sites in Tanzania.
The Tanzanian government has said that there have been no cases of Ebola and that no suspected cases are “admitted anywhere” in the country. But, officials there have been remarkably slow to respond to the WHO’s requests for information, have failed to provide critical details about the cases, have not offered alternative explanations for the illnesses and death, and have refused to perform confirmatory tests to ensure that the disease is not spreading, according to the WHO.
Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments
No comments:
Post a Comment