The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) grew by 24 cases today and over the weekend, including several case-contacts who refused or delayed vaccination after family members fell ill.
Since Saturday, 8 new cases were reported in Katwa, 6 in Vuhovi, and 5 in Masereka. Butembo, Kyondo, and Kalunguta also reported cases. Twelve new deaths were reported, including eight community deaths.
The new cases bring the outbreak total to 960 cases, including 603 deaths. A total of 172 suspected cases are still under investigation.
As of today, 89,173 people have been vaccinated with Merck's VSV-EBOV, including 22,470 in Katwa, 20,956 in Beni, and 10,972 in Butembo.
On Saturday, health officials in the DRC said the cases in Vuhovi likely came from a single family who refused follow-up care and vaccination after a family member contracted the virus.
"Following the last community death in this family, several neighbors and other villagers moved and asked to be vaccinated," health officials said, also noting that eventually the family members were treated at an Ebola treatment center.
The cases from Masereka are also family members of a confirmed patient who died on Mar 4.
Also late last week brought the fourth violent attack on response workers in the last month, this time in Biena.
According to media reports, the attack took place after health workers tried to take a blood samples from a deceased man who they suspected had Ebola. A group of young people attacked the workers, and police had to shoot at a crowd, killing one person.
Last week, in a press conference concerning the outbreak--now in its eighth month--World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, PhD, said local violence is the most detrimental factor to response efforts.
Two hundred and ninety-six refugees were diagnosed with active tuberculosis (TB) between 2010 and 2014 in Minnesota, according to the Minnesota Department of Health.
Seventy-one were diagnosed within one year of their arrival, while 225 were diagnosed after the first year.
Seventy-one were diagnosed within one year of their arrival, while 225 were diagnosed after the first year.
The number of active TB cases reported among refugees arriving in Minnesota is ten times higher than reported in any of the fourteen other states that have released refugee TB data to the public, or made it available to Breitbart News.
Minnesota’s 81 percent of TB cases diagnosed among foreign-born residents is significantly higher than the 66 percent of TB cases in the entire country that were diagnosed among foreign-born residents in 2015.
As Breitbart News reported previously, one major factor in the sudden increase in the number of reported cases of TB in the United States in 2015 (the first time in 23 years the number of TB cases has increased) is the increase in the foreign-born population as a percentage of the total population during this period of time.
Twenty-nine percent of the 593 foreign-born cases of active TB diagnosed in Minnesota, or 161, were attributed to Somali born migrants. Almost all Somali migrants to the United States have arrived under the federal refugee resettlement program.
The state of Minnesota’s population is 5.5 million. Fox News reports the population of the Somali community in the state of Minnesota is 40,000, according to census data. The Star Tribune, citing “community leaders,” reports the Somali population in the state may be as high as 70,000, or about one percent of the state’s total population.
During the five years between 2010, and 2014, 22 percent of Minnesota’s active TB cases (161 out of 732) were diagnosed among the one percent of the state’s residents born in Somalia.
The remaining 99 percent of the state’s population accounted for 78 percent of Minnesota’s active TB cases (471 out of 732).
At an average cost of $17,000 for each case of successfully treated active TB, taxpayers of Minnesota paid an estimated $5 million to treat the 296 cases of active TB diagnosed among refugees between 2010 and 2014–$3 million for the 161 Somali refugees diagnosed with active TB, and an additional $2 million to treat the 132 refugees diagnosed with active TB who were not born in Somalia.
During these five years, 10,128 refugees were resettled in Minnesota, according to the Department of State’s interactive website. Of these, 4,163 listed Burma as their country of origin and 3,458 listed Somalia as their country of origin.
Dahir Adan, who attacked ten Americans in a mall in St. Cloud, Minnesota on September 17 before he was shot and killed by an armed off-duty police officer, was a Somali refugee who arrived in North Dakota in the 1990s and subsequently moved to Minnesota, where he was a resident at the time of his death.
One particular note of concern from a health perspective is the number of refugees allowed to arrive in Minnesota with a pre-existing TB health classification who developed active TB after arriving in the United States.
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