Health workers finish vaccinating contacts of Ebola patients in DRC’s Mbandaka
Kinshasa — Medical workers in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have given all the immediate contacts of Ebola patients in the city of Mbandaka an experimental vaccine, as they try to thwart a disease that has killed about 25 people, the health ministry said. Ebola spreads easily through bodily fluids and the medical strategy involves vaccinating all the people a patient may have infected and then vaccinating a second "ring" of contacts around each of those potential sufferers. That would include family members but also people who may have come into contact with a sufferer in church or on public transport, each a potential Ebola time-bomb who must be found and vaccinated by virus-hunting experts. The VSV-EBOV vaccine, developed by Merck, has been administered to 1,112 people, including 567 in the northwestern city. That covers all known contacts of confirmed Ebola cases in the city as well as those people’s contacts, the ministry said in a statement late on Sunday. There have b...
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