Thank you for joining us here at the UN office at Geneva today, Tuesday, the 9th of June.
We are following a very important press conference which just took place with the High Commissioner for Refugees on the Global Trends report.
Now we are commencing with our regular press briefing.
We have one agenda item, but we have some colleagues who are connected and in the room to answer any queries you might have on other issues.
But the issue on the agenda today is the update on the Ebola response in the DRC.
We have joining us Tarek of WHO with a guest who he will introduce.
So I'll throw over to you right away, Tarek to introduce your guests.
Thank you very much, Orlando.
And good morning and everyone, while we have been briefing you about Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the response led by Ministry of Health, National Health authorities with support of leverage and other partners.
So today we want to continue with that, with that update we have with us Doctor Abdic Mahamud, he's the Director of Health Emergency Alert and Response Operations, joining us from Bunya.
So from the epicentre of the outbreak you have probably seen last evening we sent you the latest disease outbreak news.
If you haven't seen, we will send the notes from Doctor Abdi's remarks and we will add that that disease outbreak news.
With this, I give the floor to Doctor Abdi for his update.
Thank you, Tarek and good morning.
I'm here to provide with you an update on the outbreak of Ebola disease caused by Bundabujo virus in DRC, which has been going for now more than three weeks.
I arrived here in Bunia 15 days ago and what I witnessed is the incredible of work and daily and steady progress despite the enormous challenge.
The national leadership of the government, Doctor Mwamba Khazadi, the Director General of National Institute of Public Health and his team are here in Bunia leading from the front and supporting the provisional health department.
During my stay, I was impressed with the dedication and the passion of the frontline workers, healthcare workers caring for suspected and confirmed cases initially with limited resources.
In in Easy, I met Doctor Philip said that the medical officer in charge of caring for 10 suspected cases and in addition of caring for the rest of the hospital.
That level of dedication in front of the risk is incredible.
In addition to the healthcare workers, I would like to recognise the Red Cross volunteers in the field risking their life to ensure the safe and dignified burial in a complex environment where trust is very low.
Above all, what I've seen is the leadership of the Provisional Government under the Governor Johnny Lubayan Ghashama who has been here for the last five years supporting the Ebola response and making Bunya A vibrant and beautiful city.
I didn't expect to first time I'm here in Bunya, but it's really a good city and hopefully journalists, both journalists will come and see apart from Ebola, what else is going in this beautiful city?
And also for facilitating the access to humanitarian A tourism has been facing a challenge in humanitarian setting with over 900,000 internal displaced populations.
Governance, leadership, approach of building trust with the local community and leaders will be a cornerstone as we walk into containing this virus.
Now coming to the numbers, as of 8th June there have been 550 confirmed cases with 101 death.
The good news we have 19 community recovered patients.
So Ali identification and treatment saves life and we can't.
We are seen now with more patient being decided today here in Bunya but also in Mongualo.
The outbreak remain concentrated in this province where I am now in Ituri, accounting for 94% of the cases.
The increase in the confirmed cases is due to the scale of of testing.
Now we have a decentralised lab in Mongolia, fully functional lab where we'd be able to test and then the good news is that we are still behind the calf of this outbreak with the remaining challenges.
With the scale up going on across all these health zones, we will be able to turn around the tide.
Despite the immense challenge, Uganda has reported 19 confirmed cases and two deaths and and one probable.
Our Director General is in in Kampala and supporting the local officials and the healthcare workers and patient in DRCWHO along with partners.
We continue to support the national authority and health partner to respond.
Just to give you a few examples of what we have done so far, we're supporting the national rapid response team to perform contact tracing.
As of 6 June, there are five 5040 contacts have been identified and followed up in here in Ituri, N Kibo and S Kibo WH OS deployed 110 personnel to the three provinces, logistia and epidemiologies, coordination and and support across all the pillars.
We work very closely with our Africa CDC which we call lead the continental IMSD.
We have delivered over 40 tonnes of equipment and medical supply to keep the healthcare workers safe and strengthen the lab and testing capacity.
We help the setup of the treatment but the credit goes to all the HealthPartners who are providing MSF, Alima, IMSP International Medical course, Samaritan Pass for all coming and supporting that decentralisation of the treatment centres.
And of course all this cannot happen without all the partners.
There's a long list of the health cluster partners who have been here providing healthcare for these communities and the vulnerable relation here, including the 900,000 internal displaced last week.
Africa CDC and WHO has launched a six month joint continental preparedness plan with the ask of 518 million to support the countries both in the response but also in preparedness.
This unified one response approach will be key to rapidly contain and stop this outbreak and we help the international community will step up and support this effort.
Doctor Abdi very well noted.
If if we can get your notes that would be much appreciated.
Maybe Tarek you can share those with us.
We have a couple of questions for you starting off with Christian of the German news agency.
Abdi, could you expand a little bit on how the contact tracing is going and what the challenges are that remain or have been overcome?
The contact tracing is one of the latest pillar of of of the response.
As of now, we have reached 62% of the contracts, but our target is 90 to 95%.
Where we are, it is a slow and steady progress, but we have not reached where we want to be and that comes down to the Community Trust and working with the community.
If there's a key message is this outbreak will not succeed or will not ramp up unless we have the communities is the community and the community.
Healthcare workers will identify early the case, refer the case to the treatment centres on also help with with the contact tracing.
So it's different in some places we have reached the the 9095%, but overall, we are around 6062 with the ramp up of contact tracing and community workers.
We hope to achieve that target in the coming weeks.
We have a few questions for you.
And yes, AFP, French news agency, go ahead.
And yes, yes, hi, thank you.
A question to the Bleacho today.
Several Kenyans have been arrested in the in some protests in Kenya against the Ebola quarantine centre that the US that is being built for the US citizens.
So I was wondering how WHO is, is looking at this event and are you in contact with the with the authorities to, to see what could be done and why the centre is creating so much problems and, and do you think that this could have an impact on the propagation of the epidemic on the, on the fight against the epidemic?
Maybe other Tarek, you may want to jump in as well.
Doctor Abdi, if you have any comment on that or Tarek go to you.
Yeah, well, I think Doctor Abdi outlined what needs to be done.
And obviously Kenya and the US can can work together in the best way.
They think it's, it's, it's, it's for for their respective interests.
Like what's needed is that, and we issued the recommendations to all the countries, neighbouring countries on how to do the surveillance and make sure that if there are any cases that are being detected quickly provided medical care and then that contracts have been identified.
But I'll let Doctor Abdi if he wants to add something.
No, you, you covered it well that our recommendation remains both for the affected countries in DRC and Uganda and the country in the preparedness.
All countries needs to have a diagnostic.
Then we start with the community and the community engagement.
You cannot have a successful response unless you community.
So our recommendations remain the same.
We have the neighbouring countries where they need to do in terms of getting readiness including the treatment centres and Kenya has proven a strong capacity and capability in dealing in preparedness both for the Ebola but previously for MBOX and that.
So we have our country office, we're engaging with the Ministry of Health, but I think it's the Kenyan leadership working closely and we have no issues coming countries coming in solidarity.
As I mentioned Ali, the resources required for 580 million is a lot and we need the US government, the UK on all the donors to come together supporting DRC and Uganda, but also the other neighbouring country, including Kenya in preparing their lab diagnostic capacity in building their treatment centres both for their for their citizens, but for also for the international.
Nairobi has one of the highest UN presidency.
So for us is is is a local bilateral collaboration between the Kenyan government and the US, and that dialogue and community engagement is the key.
As if I've said in in my previous interventions, you cannot have a successful preparedness or response unless you have the community with you on your side.
Bianca, I noted that your hand was up early.
I'm not sure if this is a question for WHO or is this another issue?
Yes, Holando, thanks a lot.
I think Doctor Abdi Mahmoud for sharing all the information with us.
But I know it's a extreme relevant subject, but as a Brazilian correspondent, I need to take advantage of Tarek in this briefing and ask something related to Brazil.
So Orlando, do you prefer we continue with Ebola and I come back with dengue after the Ebola questions.
Yeah, I think it would be better if we just exhaust the questions in Ebola.
But of course, another important issue which we'll raise, but we'll go back to you afterwards.
So on that, I'll go to the next question is John Zaracostas.
Dr Abdi, I was wondering if you could also bring us up to speed on the number of suspected cases as of eight June in both the Congo and also in neighbouring Uganda.
We we may have to share with you on the Dawn.
I don't have the latest data because the data has been clean around.
So the numbers is backlog.
But what I would like to say is the lab has intensified so far.
Any suspected will be able to be tested in toll of.
So the previous suspected were backlog from previous before the outbreak was declared.
But now we don't have any suspected case that comes to the treatment centres.
We'll be able to get the results in 24 hours.
So maybe the data needs to be updated.
I think they just need to be confirmed.
So it's just someone with symptoms and then the doctors will go and look at the case definition classified in a suspected and then they collect sample and within 2424 hours we should be able to get the results.
So the major backlog that UCC suspected, we are no longer facing that pressure because we have a lab here.
We have a lab in South Kivu, in in North Kivu and even in more hard to reach area like Mongolia, there's a lab and there's another lapping plan for Aru.
So we will not be talking about that backlog as they come.
They will be either confirmed or discarded.
Hello, Thank you very much indeed, Doctor Abdi.
And also thoughts with your team obviously working in an extremely difficult environment.
I just thought you mentioned about testing capacity and I just actually wanted to just get a few more details.
I think what would be super helpful to understand is just exactly what what the process looks like now when it comes to testing of cases, how long it takes, who then communicates the results.
Does any kind of like a forensic detail be really helpful just to understand how now?
Because I appreciate testing has evolved a lot since since the first day of the outbreak.
So yeah, it's a bit of a detailed explanation of the process would be really great because I know you're saying some stuff has been established now in recent days.
I mean, the main system works with the surveillance.
So starting with the community surveillance and the community workers will report an alert they may be a suspected and that the healthcare ward, the team at the Helzone.
For those ones who are not familiar with DRCS, you have the province under the province is Helzone or what we call in other countries districts and then they're under the district there's area decente.
So the Helzone team together with the provisional team will go and investigate the case, collect the samples and then send them to the lab.
So where we are now in Bunya, most of the areas are within that one hour drive.
So samples will arrive in the lab, data will be entered from the health zone level.
We have a system called DHS tracker.
Is the same system being used whether in the treatment centre or in the lab or the surveillance team?
So it's one system where you enter the epidemiological investigation, the team doing the treatment are using the same system and also at the lab.
So these are an integrated system.
And if there's an immediate required, the clinical treatment can also go.
So the well functioning system that's integrated from surveillance to contact tracing to the treatment centre and to the lab.
So there's end to end data system and data shared.
Of course there are places with limited Internet, yeah, so that's another challenge.
I'm not trying to paint a rosy picture.
There are places that you cannot reach.
It takes hours, 7-8 hours for the sample to reach.
But overall, with a lab decentralisation and the ramp up of the scalar, we are confident that that aspect of testing and confirmation will be as rapid as possible.
I think Olivia has a follow up on that.
Then over to you, Christian afterwards.
And yes, there's just a simple question.
When we say rapid as possible, is that like within 24 hours, 48 hours, 3 days, Just to have a rough sense of realistically what the time scale is at the moment of getting tested and getting the test result back.
I mean, City Tour is as big as France.
That's what we're talking about.
South places like here you can get, if you are in Bunya, you can get your result in one or two hours.
In a places that's far, you can get within 24 hours with the decentralisation of the lab, having a lab in Arrow, Arrow is the farthest from here.
That can take 7 to 10 hours by Rd.
So by Friday we'll have a lab there.
We are talking of hours in, that's that's the goal.
Within the day someone get admitted to a suspected get the results so that we don't keep long the suspected or confirm at the same time.
So it's hours and a day that's the goal.
The ideal goal is every the treatment centre to have the diagnostic capacity and a quick turn around.
But in Bunya and the neighbouring area we are able to achieve that goal of within 2-3 hours the same day getting the result.
Another question from Adpa Christian.
Yes, Doctor Abdi, some clarification on the confirmed deaths.
We knew had Ebola and who died in the last couple of days.
Or are you also investigating older cases of people who have died who might have had Ebola be which was not diagnosed before they died?
In other words, how many deaths are suspected of being Ebola connected?
The death I reported 101 deaths are confirmed deaths in DRC.
So before the outbreak declaration, we had a number of around 248.
I don't have the exact number, but we had a backlog of 258.
Is what going on to look retrospectively how many of those fit the case definition of Ebola and how many of them does it?
So that work is going on as you can imagine from different tell zones.
And our main focus right now is to deal with the current outbreak that's increasing and then dedicate some resources because when you do a retrospective work, you're taken away from the progressive work that needs to happen to be escalated.
So the work is going on and going through the before the declaration of the outbreak, the suspected death, how many of them are true Ebola with Ebola like symptoms and most probably those will be classified as probable because they died before the collection of sample.
So that work is going on and it will may take some time and we don't want to distract from the current priority of doing contact tracing, engaging with the community insurance, safe and dignified burial.
So top priority for us as a programme under the leadership of the government is to support the current work that needs to be scaled up.
So sorry, did you say that you were looking at 250 cases or did I mishear that previous cases where retrospectively you are trying to work out?
Did you give a number of how many you are looking at?
If I remember correctly, Tarek maybe remind me but 258 but I don't have the exact, but it was a suspected date that are now be before the outbreak declaration.
I don't know Tarek if you have more granularity on that or maybe we can get back to.
I need to get to to what we had before.
Please check also the, the, the, the disease outbreak news that we sent yesterday.
And also it's always good to check the, the, the sitrep of the Ministry of Health that that is being also published with the latest numbers.
But we may be back to you on this.
I think on that note, we're done with Ebola.
So, Doctor Abdi, thank you so very much for joining us and thank you for the immensely important work you're doing.
Stay safe and and do join us anytime connecting with our journalists here in Geneva.
I think there's a question from Bianca.
So maybe we can ask Bianca to pose a question concerning Brazil.
Yeah, Terry, yesterday, I imagine you know that in Brazil, following two suspicious deaths, the health minister suspended the use of Boutantan dengue vaccine.
This was the the world's first single dose dengue vaccine.
So how is The Who following the situation?
Does The Who support Brazil's decision to suspend vaccination?
How concerned is the and is there any recommendation?
I will have to really see with the with colleagues in in our regional office, also in the country office and with our experts.
I mean, if you look at the at the, at the our fact sheet on dengue, there is, there is one vaccine that it's available for dengue protection and it's TAC003 that's produced by Takeda and it's a 2 dose series.
So this is the only available dengue vaccine that is being licenced.
So I really need to get more information of on what vaccine has been used there.
And I will check with my colleagues.
Please send me an e-mail and we will get that from our experts.
Tarek, do we have further questions for WHO?
No, we're taking advantage of Tariq being yes we do and yes, sorry, it's just a follow up on Ebola on a figure that what given.
But maybe you if you don't have the the answer now you can send us by by mail.
But Doctor Abdirahman say that 62% of the contacts so far has been identified and and traced, followed up.
And then he said that 505,040 have been phoned contacts.
So the question is, is this 62% just for DRC or also for Uganda?
And the same question for the 5000.
I'm just looking at the at the at the at the Ministry of Health of DRC latest CITRIP and that's where they say that 64.4% to the CV, the contact for the tropical answer.
So that's, that's that's for DRC.
Again, I, I, I don't have a figures here from from Uganda and I will try to get to those.
Anything further for Tarik?
I will, I will share this this thing in a, in a, in a chat so people can have a quick look at the Ctrip from the Democratic.
Yeah, if you could also share it beyond the chat.
Yes, Taha, you have a question for Tarek.
Thank you Tarek for giving giving us this overview.
Is this a real, is this a real disease or is it made-up for African people?
This is this is a real disease.
Thank you so much for the questions for Tarek.
So Tarek, thank you as always for joining us here.
That's it for the topics, proactive topics.
I have just a few announcements to make and then, then we can call it a wrap.
There was a statement that we shared with you rather late last night attributable to the spokesperson for the Secretary General on the situation in the Middle East.
And since we have a little time, maybe if you didn't indulge me, I'll just read out the statement.
Secretary General is deeply alarmed by the renewed escalation in the Middle East.
He calls on all concerned parties to immediately stop attacks, exercise maximum restraint and refrain from any action that could further inflamed an already volatile situation.
Secretary General urges all parties to fully abide by the cease fires in Lebanon, Iran and Gaza and to avoid any steps that could undermine ongoing diplomatic efforts.
Secretary General is also deeply concerned by the decision by Israel to close crossings into Gaza.
He reiterates his call for the immediate reopening of all crossings to ensure the rapid, safe and unhindered passage of humanitarian assistance at scale throughout Gaza.
Secretary General underscores that the exercise of navigational rights and freedoms in accordance with international law must be respected.
He further calls on all parties to uphold their obligations under international law and to take all feasible precautions to protect civilians.
Secretary General reiterates that there is no military solution to the conflicts in the Middle East.
The only way forward is through dialogue and negotiations.
He therefore urges all concerned parties to work toward diplomatic solutions that advance regional and international peace and security.
That's the end of the statement which we shared with you last night.
I also wanted to flag a couple of statements that were delivered to the Security Council yesterday by Rosemary De Carlo and also by the acting ASG of OCHA concerning Ukraine.
Mr Carlo notes how the UN has well she's warned that the war in Ukraine has entered an even more dangerous and deadly phase, with civilian casualties continuing to rise and recent large scale attacks causing extensive loss of life and damage to civilian infrastructure.
And for their part, the acting ASG of OCHA notes how the humanitarian situation in Ukraine is deteriorating as intensified attacks continue to kill and injure civilians, damage critical infrastructure and hinder humanitarian operations.
And as we always do, the UN calls at all parties to protect civilians and aid workers to ensure humanitarian access and provide resources to needed needed to assist at 10.8 million people requiring humanitarian support in Ukraine.
So 2 statements that were shared that were delivered to the Security Council yesterday on the situation of Ukraine.
Another statement that we shared with you is an SG statement at an annual memorial service, at the annual memorial service honouring staff members who lost their lives in the line of duty.
He notes that paid tribute specifically to the 136 UN personnel who lost their lives in line of duty last year.
And we are deeply grateful to be joined by, well, there's many of the people, many of them family members were there.
Of these, the 100 and 3697 were civilian personnel and 39 uniformed peacekeepers.
Among these killed yet last year, 80 were working for UNRWA alone.
And we know that the death toll for their colleagues from UNRWA is much higher.
Shocking statistics which were uttered in this important statement of the SG yesterday.
Just to give you a heads up, Secretary General, later today we'll deliver and remarks to the 19th session of the Conference of State Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
That's today at 4:00 PM Geneva time, 10 AM, New York.
We'll share those remarks with you as soon as they're delivered.
The Conference on Disarmament is holding an informal plenary meeting today on the improved and effective functioning of the conference.
There are no human rights treaty bodies.
Well, sorry, there is a Committee on the Rights of Migrant Workers meeting in private at the end of the week.
They will actually submit their concluding observations.
A number of appointments that we shared with you yesterday as well, all on from the UNHCR, and you just heard from the head of UNHCR moments ago.
We have appointments of the Deputy High Commissioner, the Assistant High Commissioner for Operations and the Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, all three very high level appointments at the UN Refugee Agency as appointed by the Secretary General.
So those were shared with you yesterday and I'm almost done here.
Just to flag again, I think Alessandra mentioned it to you already last this past Friday that this coming Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, the 15th through the 17th of June, we have meeting hosted by our colleagues at the disarmament affairs, informal exchanges and artificial intelligence in the military domain taking place at tempos there.
The informal exchanges as noted are private, but there are lots of interesting side events experts available at your disposable at your disposal should you want to interview them.
So take a look at that media advisor we shared with you nearly done here press conferences tomorrow.
As you will have seen, Pascal shared with you a media advisory as did we for a the traditional pre Human Rights Council press briefing with the President of the Human Rights Council.
The Ambassador of Indonesia, Ambassador Sergio Diputo, will hold a press briefing tomorrow at 9:00 AM in his office in the A building.
And this is a significant session.
As as you might know, it's the 20th anniversary.
It's it was 2006 in June when the Human Rights Council first met.
So it's the 20th anniversary of that important occasion.
So again, the briefing is in his office tomorrow at 9:00 AM.
And if you have questions, do contact Pascal SIM.
Lastly, tomorrow is the International Day for Dialogue among Civilizations.
We just shared with you a message from the Secretary General on this important occasion, through which he notes how we are living through a period of turbulence and transformations with conflicts, ragings, raging inequalities, widening and evolving technologies from AI to clean energy, which present us with the critical choices about the future we want to create.
So he says the path forward is dialogue in this important message that we shared with you in multiple languages short while ago.
So I think that's it for me if you have any questions.
On that note, wish you a good afternoon.
