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WHO / DRC EBOLA UPDATE
STORY: WHO / DRC EBOLA UPDATE
TRT: 01:48
SOURCE: WHO
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 06 JUNE 2019, GENEVA SWITZERLAND / FILE
FILE - GENEVA SWITZERLAND
1. Wide shot, exterior, Palais des Nations
06 JUNE 2019, GENEVA SWITZERLAND
2. Wide shot, conference room
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Michaël Ryan, Executive Director, Health Emergencies Programme, World Health Organization (WHO):
“We need to be exceptionally cautious. But we also need to have hope that the measures that have been put in place over the last six weeks and before, are beginning to bear some operational fruit, but we need to remain exceptionally cautious. We need to work very, very hard over the coming weeks to ensure that any gains that we are making are sustained and we need to be very aware that this virus will exploit any opportunity that it gets to increase transmission and most importantly and that is our continued fear is further violence that would disrupt the operations in the field.”
4. Med shot, dais
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Michaël Ryan, Executive Director, Health Emergencies Programme, World Health Organization (WHO):
“The presence of surveillance teams on the ground, our field presence on the ground, the number of local staff trained and the basic daily efficiency of contact tracing and active case finding, would indicate that we're not missing a massive sump of undetected cases. However, we are definitely missing cases, because when you have community deaths like that and probable cases, then you are definitely missing transmission and there the one-billion-dollar question is: how big is that number?”
6. Med shot, dais
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Michaël Ryan, Executive Director, Health Emergencies Programme, World Health Organization (WHO):
“We are now on 2,025 cases including 1,357 deaths, 552 survivors. Of note is that over the last two weeks we've had 88 new cases each week. Meaning that in April. The average is 126 per week. Numbers are stabilized and in fact fallen in the last two weeks.”
8. Wide shot, conference room
Reporting a significant decrease in new cases, the Executive Director of the World Health Organization (WHO) Health Emergencies Programme, Michaël Ryan, today (6 Jun) said that measures put in place over the last six weeks to combat the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) “are beginning to bear some operational fruit.”
Ryan said, “we need to remain exceptionally cautious. We need to work very, very hard over the coming weeks to ensure that any gains that we are making are sustained and we need to be very aware that this virus will exploit any opportunity that it gets to increase transmission and most importantly and that is our continued fear is further violence that would disrupt the operations in the field.”
He said there are no indications of “a massive sump of undetected cases,” however, he said, “we are definitely missing cases.” The “one-billion-dollar question,” Ryan said, is “how big is that number?”
The WHO official said, “we are now on 2025 cases including 1357 deaths, 552 survivors. Of note is that over the last two weeks we've had 88 new cases each week. Meaning that in April. The average is 126 per week. Numbers are stabilized and in fact fallen in the last two weeks.”
He reported “substantial” transmission in a number of Health zones, including Butembo and in Mabalako, and a “significant” decrease in transmission in Katwa.
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