Sitting on a stool outside her wood-plank house in Cameroon, indifferent to the light rain falling, Diane described how she killed her five-year-old “sorcerer” son.

They boy had suffered from episodes of severe pain his whole life, and was weak and thin, she said. As is the custom in the Central African country, she and his father consulted traditional healers known as marabouts about what to do.

“Madam, your child is a sorcerer,” they said. “He came into the world to torture you. He will die one day,” recalled Diane, who asked not to be identified by her real name. The marabouts told her it was useless to seek medical help.

So on a Thursday morning in February last year, at the rooster’s crow, she suffocated her son with an old pillow.

“I kept the pressure on like in movies and he died,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, with no sign of remorse.

“I killed my child because he was going to die anyway. Before, he was suffering greatly. Now he is at peace.”

What the boy really suffered from was sickle-cell disease, a genetic condition that causes abnormally shaped red blood cells and a variety of complications. It can be treated but not cured.

Diane had learned that she and her partner carried the disease trait during a hospital visit with their first child, who died. But she believed the marabouts over the doctors.

“They told us we couldn’t have more children because we would give them the disease. It was false. The marabouts showed us that sickle-cell children came into the world to torture us and spend all our money,” said the frail 32-year-old.

It took seven months for Diane to agree to tell her story, on the condition that her real name and location not be revealed.

Of the 19 people with sickle-cell disease the Thomson Reuters Foundation interviewed for this story, 16 said they were called “sorcerers” and “devils” as children, abandoned by their fathers and subjected to “demystification” rituals that could have killed them.

Eleven mothers said they believed their children were sorcerers.

“In Cameroon, sickle-cell disease is synonymous with discrimination, the disease of shame, something mystical,” said Fernand Tekoua, president of the national association of people with sickle-cell disease.

“It is ingrained in habits and in society. Even the family thinks you are worthless and just waiting for your day to die,” he said.

LIVING DEAD

Sickle-cell disease is most common in Africa, and affects up to two percent of the population in tropical countries such as Cameroon, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

The main symptoms are pain attacks which can last up to a week, a susceptibility to infections, and anemia, which causes weakness and fatigue. Most children with the most severe form die before the age of five, according to WHO.

Like Diane, other parents interviewed described their children as having been constantly sick since birth.

“Sickle-cell crises are frequent and a week of hospitalization can cost over 200,000 CFA francs ($350). The majority of families don’t even have money to eat,” said Tekoua of the national association.

“The child with sickle-cell disease is thus seen as the one that ruins the family.”

Although there is no evidence that children with sickle-cell disease are regularly murdered in Cameroon, interviews with doctors, patients, and parents suggested that it is possible, and that others die of intentional neglect.

“He’s a monster, he deserves to die,” said one mother in the capital Yaounde of her nine-year-old son. When she found out he had sickle-cell disease two years ago, her partner abandoned her and she never took the boy to the hospital again.

“I wouldn’t shed a tear at the death of this child that separated me from my husband,” she said.

Several people with the disease said their parents would tell them: “Why did I bring you into the world? You shouldn’t be alive. Die and leave us in peace.”

They were referred to as “living dead”, “revenants”, “disciples of the devil” and “guardians of hell”, they said.

Hans Edgar, 24, who is living with the disease, said that his father walked out on the family after refusing to spend a penny on his “sorcerer son”.

His mother then took him to a marabout, who one day put him on a grate over burning coals to rid his body of the bad spirit.

“I was little and I jumped with all the force of desperation to save my skin,” he said. “He wanted to grill me like a chicken.”

PREVENTION

Cameroon’s health ministry estimates that sickle-cell disease is responsible for 16 percent of all deaths of children under five, said Etoundi Mballa, head of the division for diseases and epidemics.

“This is a lot. It’s a really worrying problem,” he said.

In 2014, the first treatment center devoted to the disease was opened in a hospital in Cameroon’s second city Douala. But unlike HIV, tuberculosis and malaria programs, it is not subsidized by the government.

Mballa said the health ministry’s plan for fighting the disease included awareness-raising, free vaccines for certain infections and free iron tablets and antibiotics.

The ministry also recommends that young adults get tested for the trait before marrying and having children, he said.

But people living with the disease said much more must be done to spread correct information and make treatment affordable.

In Douala, those who have survived into adolescence and adulthood meet twice a week to console one another, discuss the future, and share concerns and advice.

To end the disease, they think the government should make blood tests free and mandatory.

“If my parents had done this test, I would not be going around today with this disease that destroyed my life,” said Allan, a 17-year-old student.

“We must give all Cameroonians a chance to save the next generation of children.”

Source: Reuters

The World Health Organization (WHO) says seven more people in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been infected with the Ebola virus, warning that the outbreak of the lethal disease in the central African country has a clear “potential to expand”.

“We are on the epidemiological knife edge,” Peter Salama, WHO Deputy Director-General for Emergency Preparedness and Response, told a special meeting on Wednesday.

“The next few weeks will really tell if this outbreak is going to expand to urban areas or if we are going to be able to keep it under control,” he added.

The WHO on Wednesday declared that seven new cases of Ebola were reported in DR Congo, and raised the number of cases to 58 since the outbreak was declared earlier this month, of which 27 have been deaths.

The Ebola outbreak was first reported in rural northwestern DR Congo in a remote northwestern location called Bikoro on May 8.

Last Thursday, the first urban case was detected in the city of Mbandaka. The agency said seven cases have surfaced in Mbandaka districts so far.

“An urban case means that it can spread quickly. That is another challenge,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told Wednesday’s special session during the agency’s annual World Health Assembly.

The WHO also expressed concern about the possible spread of the outbreak to neighboring countries.

“They are connected, they are very close, and that is another challenge that makes the problem really serious,” Adhanom said.

Meanwhile, Salama cited another concerning factor which is the infection in healthcare workers as five of the infected are health personnel.

“That is a tragedy in its own right, but it also signals the potential for further amplification,” he said.

The Ebola virus can be fatal as a result of damages it does on blood vessels which causes internal and external bleeding.

Source: Presstv

An Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of the Congo has a high risk of spreading internally, the World Health Organization warned Friday ahead of a meeting on whether to declare it an event of international concern.

In a statement, the UN agency said WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus would convene an emergency committee to discuss the matter.

The fresh Ebola outbreak, publicly declared on May 8 with 23 deaths so far, was first reported in a rural part of Equateur Province in the vast country’s northwest but has now spread to the city of Mbandaka.

Mbandaka’s population has been variously estimated at between 700,000 and 1.2 million.

Peter Salama, in charge of emergency response at the WHO, has said the spread to a city complicated the fight against Ebola, which depends on identifying and isolating suspected cases.

The city is on the banks of the Congo River which connects to the capital Kinshasa, hundreds of kilometers to the south, and also to surrounding countries, increasing the risk of a national and regional outbreak, according to WHO officials.

Ebola is lethal and highly contagious, which makes it difficult to contain — especially in urban environments where people are mobile and come into more contact with others.

Lacking an arsenal of drugs to treat the virus, doctors isolate patients and trace people who have been in contact with them.

The WHO revised its assessment of the risk of spread of the epidemic to “very high” at the national level and “high” for neighboring countries.

Globally the risk of the outbreak spreading is classified as “low.”

The current outbreak involves the same strain of the virus that hit three West African countries in 2013-15 and sparked an international panic.

It went on to kill more than 11,300 people, in the deadliest ever Ebola epidemic.

The WHO was fiercely criticized over its handling of the 2013 outbreak and has pledged to improve emergency response.

There is no licensed drug to treat or prevent Ebola, although an experimental vaccine arrived in the DRC on Wednesday and has been cleared for use by the Kinshasa government.

(Source: AFP)

Congo’s Ebola outbreak has entered “a new phase” after a case of the deadly virus was detected for the first time in the northwest city of Mbandaka, with a population of about 1 million people, the health minister said late on Wednesday.

So far, the 23 deaths believed to have been caused by Democratic Republic of Congo’s latest Ebola outbreak had been detected in more isolated areas, giving authorities a better chance of ring-fencing the virus.

The first urban case to be announced threatens to change that. The World Health Organization, which on Wednesday deployed the first experimental vaccines in the vast central African country, had expressed concern about the disease reaching Mbandaka, which would make the outbreak far harder to tackle.

Adding to concerns is the city’s location on the banks of the Congo River, a major thoroughfare for trade and transport into the capital, Kinshasa. The Congo Republic is on the other side of the river.

“We are entering a new phase of the Ebola outbreak that is now affecting three health zones, including an urban health zone,” Health Minister Oly Ilunga Kalenga said in a statement. “Since the announcement of the alert in Mbandaka, our epidemiologists are working in the field to identify people who have been in contact with suspected cases.”

He said authorities would intensify population tracing at all air, river and road routes out of the city. It is the ninth time Ebola has been recorded in Congo since the disease made its first known appearance near its northern Ebola river in the 1970s.

Ebola is most feared for the internal and external bleeding it can cause in victims owing to damage done to blood vessels. Before Wednesday’s announcement, there had been only two cases of the virus confirmed by lab tests.

The first batch of over 4,000 Ebola vaccines was sent by the WHO to Kinshasa on Wednesday. The Health Ministry said vaccinations would start by early next week, the first time the vaccine would come into use since it was developed two years ago.

The vaccine, developed by Merck and Co Inc, is still not licensed but proved effective during limited trials in West Africa in the biggest-ever outbreak of Ebola, which killed 11,300 people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone from 2014 to 2016.

Before the latest confirmed case, Peter Salama, the WHO’s deputy director-general for emergency preparedness and response, said the current number of suspected, probable or confirmed cases stood at 42, with 23 deaths attributed to the outbreak. He said another 4,000-vaccine batch was expected soon.

Health workers have recorded confirmed, probable and suspected cases of Ebola in three health zones of Congo’s Equateur province, and have identified 432 people who may have had contact with the disease, the WHO said.

Supplies sent to Congo included more than 300 body bags for safe burials in affected communities. The vaccine will be reserved for people suspected of coming into contact with the disease, as well as health workers.

The vaccine requires storage at a temperature between -60 and -80 degrees C, tricky in a country with unreliable electricity.

“We are now tracing more than 4,000 contacts of patients and they have spread out all over the region of northwest Congo, so they have to be followed up and the only way to reach them is motorcycles,” Salama said.

(REUTERS)

The World Health Organization sent the first 4,000 doses of an Ebola vaccine to Congo on Wednesday, the first time the experimental vaccine has been deployed since it was developed during the last big outbreak two years ago.

The vaccine, developed by Merck, is still not licensed but proved effective during limited trials in West Africa in the biggest ever outbreak of Ebola, which killed 11,300 people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone from 2014-2016.

Health officials hope they can use it to contain the latest outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo, which the WHO believes has so far killed 20 people since April.

Health workers have recorded two confirmed cases, 22 probable cases and 17 suspected cases of Ebola in three health zones of Congo’s Equateur province, and identified 432 people who may have had contact with the disease.

The WHO said it had sent 300 body bags for safe burials in effected communities, a possible indication of how big it expects the outbreak to be.

The first batch of 4,000 doses of vaccine was already being flown to Kinshasa, and the WHO plans to send a second batch of 4,000 doses in coming days, WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said. It will be reserved for people suspected of coming in contact with the disease.

“In our experience, for each confirmed case of Ebola there are about 100-150 contacts and contacts of contacts eligible for vaccination,” Jasarevic said. “So it means this first shipment would be probably enough for around 25-26 rings – each around one confirmed case.”

The outbreak was first spotted in the Bikoro zone, which has 31 of the cases and 274 contacts. There have also been eight cases and 115 contacts in Iboko health zone.

The WHO is worried about the disease reaching the city of Mbandaka with a population of about 1 million people, which would make the outbreak far harder to tackle. Two brothers in Mbandaka who recently stayed in Bikoro for funerals are probable cases, with samples awaiting laboratory confirmation.

The WHO report said 1,500 sets of personal protective equipment and an emergency sanitary kit sufficient for 10,000 people for three months were being put in place.

(Source: Reuters)

The World Health Organization (WHO) says it is preparing for the “worst case scenario” as it responds to the Ebola outbreak in the DRC. It adds that it also considers the risk of the Ebola epidemic spreading high.

Though current cases are limited to the Bikoro region Equateur province, a pretty remote area of the country.

32 people are suspected to have been infected with Ebola viral disease, including three health care workers. Eighteen of those who have died, including one of the health care workers.

Source: Africa News