Christians Rush To Halt Ebola Outbreak In Africa
By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent
DODOMA (Worthy News) – Christian aid workers are rushing to provide personal protective equipment (PPE) to east and southern Africa after an outbreak of Ebola, the highly deadly contagious disease that has already killed scores of people in recent weeks.
Barnabas Fund told Worthy News it is involved in transporting the PPE donated by Ireland for Christian hospitals in five African nations.
“Around 50 million pieces of PPE, worth around $33 million, were donated to Christian hospitals in east and southern Africa by the Irish government,” Barnabas Fund said.
“Distribution of the PPE is ongoing in Kenya and Zambia and is about to commence in Zimbabwe. The equipment is currently on its way to Uganda,” where the death toll from the Ebola epidemic declared in late September has reportedly climbed to 44, the group explained.
Barnabas Fund earlier delivered PPE to Tanzania with the nation’s Health Minister Ummy Mwalimu welcoming the assignment on September 29, the group said. While initially brought to battle COVID-19, health workers will now also use PPE to fight Ebola.
“Medical masks, gloves, scrubs and other items included in nine 40-foot shipping containers of PPE are being issued to health staff working in areas of Tanzania deemed at the highest risk of ebola,” Barnabas Fund said.
In hard-hit Uganda, authorities reported 14 cases of Ebola in the greater Kampala region.
But Health Minister Ruth Jane Aceng tried to assure worried residents that the situation in the capital was under control.
CONFIRMED CASES
Aceng said that of the 14 confirmed cases in the Kampala area, nine were contacts of a fatality from Kassanda, one of two central districts at the heart of the outbreak.
Of the nine, she stressed that those infected included seven family members from Masanafu, a densely populated slum area in Kampala. It lies near the Kasubi royal tombs, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and not far from Uganda’s two main private universities.
Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni has ordered Kassanda and Mubende, the epicenter of the Sudan variant of the Ebola virus, to be put under a three-week lockdown.
The measures include an overnight curfew, restrictions on movement, and the closure of places of worship and entertainment.
But Aceng told media in the capital that the “situation in Kampala is still under control and (there is) no need to restrict people’s movements.”
Yet residents of the capital, a city of about 1.5 million people bordering Lake Victoria, said they are anxious, as they recall the many deaths in previous years.
Barnabas Fund explained that Ebola claimed more than 11,300 lives in West Africa between 2014 and 2016 and killed 2,280 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2018.
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