Frontline workers in DRC receive Ervebo vaccine amid growing Ebola outbreak - Africanews English

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For years, Doan Quang Dung, an applied epidemiologist at the Queensland Health Department in Australia, worked within the limits of his laboratory bench: specimens, reagents, a microscope. Then COVID-19 shifted his world, and the period of forced reflection drove him “to look beyond the lab, and at populations that were most at risk of disease.” What began as curiosity during a crisis became a mission, and it led him to the World Health Organization’s Field Epidemiology Fellowship Programme (FEFP) in the Western Pacific.  “FEFP provided an eye-opening transition from the controlled lab to the ‘boots on the ground’ reality of field epidemiology, where I worked with complex datasets to uncover the causes and effects of disease,” he shared. This year, that programme turns 20. From mentorship to a regional engine FEFP was established in 2006, to help countries detect and respond rapidly to emerging infections and other acute public health events. Initially individual and mentorship-based, in 2011 it became more structured.

Beni, Democratic Republic of Congo – The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has spread to another health zone in the east, while a fatal imported case in Kenya has underscored the risk of cross-border transmission. The World Health Organization (WHO) said in an October 8 update that Alimbongo health zone in North Kivu province had reported cases for the first time. As of October 6, four confirmed cases, including two deaths, had been recorded there. The outbreak is caused by the Bundibugyo virus, a species of Ebola virus. According to the WHO, cases had been reported in 64 health zones across seven provinces in the DRC. Ituri remained the worst-affected province in cumulative cases, while North Kivu was accounting for a growing share of newly confirmed infections. As of October 6, the WHO had recorded 8,728 confirmed cases and 4,205 confirmed deaths in the DRC. A further 2,269 people had recovered, and the crude case fatality ratio stood at 48.2 percent. Kenya confirms imported caseKenya confirmed its first imported case of Bundibugyo virus disease on October 6, according to the WHO.

A new palliative care resource honours the knowledge of frontline workers and builds on it. A new national palliative and end-of-life care resource is providing frontline workers with tools and strategies to better support people who are aging with serious illness alongside poverty and homelessness. The University of Victoria-led collective of researchers, frontline workers, and palliative care practitioners today launched the Palliative Care Is… curriculum at the Montreal International Congress on Palliative Care.  Kelli Stajduhar, a professor in UVic's School of Nursing and the Institute on Aging & Lifelong Health, says their research over the last decade has shown that frontline workers are often the main point of contact and trusted source of support for people experiencing homelessness.  "They walk alongside people experiencing cancers, lung disease, and heart conditions in the homeless service settings, but often aren’t recognized or supported in the care work they do," Stajduhar says.  “We often recognize doctors and nurses as part of the care team, but these frontline workers can be left out, and their knowledge and experience excluded.”