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This Weekly Bulletin focuses on public health emergencies occurring in the WHO African region. This week’s articles cover:
- Marburg virus disease in Equatorial Guinea - Lassa Fever in Ghana - Mpox in Africa
For each of these events, a brief description, followed by public health measures implemented and an interpretation of the situation is provided.
A table is provided at the end of the bulletin with information on all new and ongoing public health events currently being monitored in the region, as well as recent events that have been controlled and closed.
Major issues and challenges include:
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WHO response to the ongoing Marburg Virus Disease outbreak in Equatorial Guinea continues with no new confirmed case reported in the past three weeks. There has been only one confirmed case reported on 12 February 2023. With the technical and logistic supports from the Government and partners, one of key achievements for the past week was the setup of a field laboratory at Ebebeyin district hospital to reinforce local diagnostic capacity for hemorrhagic fever diseases detection including Marburg disease. Other response activities are still underway to contain this outbreak.
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Ghana is reporting an increasing number of confirmed cases of Lassa fever among contacts of the first two confirmed cases notified on 24 February 2023 in the Greater Accra Region. The high number of infections recorded among healthcare workers who attended to the confirmed cases at health facilities, underscores an urgent need to address gaps pertaining infection prevention and control, including the limited supplies of PPES at the health facilities. Other issues that need immediate actions include the unavailability of Ribavirin in the Country for case management, limitation in contacts listing and follow-up, and limited supply of testing reagents and supplies.
Furthermore, epidemiological and environmental investigations need to be accelerated in order to identify the source of the outbreak.