No immediate plans for Ebola travel ban, Ottawa says, as deaths rise in eastern Congo

Open this photo in gallery:

Canada has no immediate plans to follow the Trump administration’s ban on travellers from three African countries considered at risk from the Ebola virus, a federal health official says.

A rare strain of Ebola, without any approved treatment or vaccine, has been spreading rapidly across the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with two cases reaching across the border into Uganda.

More than 135 suspected deaths and more than 540 suspected cases are now recorded, a sharp increase in the past three days, authorities said on Tuesday. The virus is believed to have been spreading for several weeks without detection because of a lack of adequate testing labs in the region.

The U.S. travel ban prevents entry by anyone from Uganda, the DRC and South Sudan, except U.S. citizens or permanent residents. Health experts worry that border restrictions will create stigma and encourage people to evade screening.

While there are currently no travel-related health measures for Ebola at Canada’s borders, the Public Health Agency of Canada will assess any emerging evidence as it considers possible interventions, Health Canada spokesman Mark Johnson told The Globe and Mail.

“There has never been an imported case of Ebola disease into Canada and there are currently no cases of Ebola disease in North America,” Mr. Johnson said in an e-mail.

At least six Americans in eastern Congo have been exposed to the Ebola virus, and one who tested positive has been flown to Germany for treatment, U.S. officials say.

The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump announced the travel ban on Monday, restricting any non-American travellers who have been in Congo, Uganda and South Sudan in the past 21 days. No Ebola cases have been reported in South Sudan, but its southern borders are close to the epicentre of the outbreak.

The U.S. ban has provoked concern. “Africa needs solidarity, not stigma,” the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement on Tuesday.

Africa CDC said it is calling on all countries, in the continent and globally, to “refrain from imposing unnecessary travel or trade restrictions” in response to the latest Ebola outbreak.

It did not mention specific examples. But in addition to the U.S. ban, Rwanda has closed its normally busy border crossings with the DRC.

“The world must avoid repeating the mistakes of previous health emergencies, where fear-driven measures caused major economic damage without delivering proportionate public health benefits,” Africa CDC said.

Open this photo in gallery:

The latest Ebola outbreak, centred in the Ituri province of eastern Congo, is caused by the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, which has an estimated death rate of 30 to 50 per cent. There have been only two previous recorded outbreaks of this virus.

The virus was first identified nearly 20 years ago, yet there are still no licensed treatments or vaccines for it. This highlights a “deeper structural injustice” in the global health system, Africa CDC said in its statement.

“Africa CDC believes that if this disease had predominantly threatened wealthier regions of the world, medical countermeasures would likely already be available,” it said.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, said he is “deeply concerned about the scale and speed” of the latest Ebola outbreak.

The outbreak began in a mining zone with “high levels of population movement that increase the risk of further spread,” Dr. Tedros said in a speech to the World Health Assembly on Tuesday.

Cases have been reported in major cities, including Kampala in Uganda and Goma in eastern Congo, he noted. And there is armed conflict in Ituri province, with escalating fighting in recent months.

“Over 100,000 people have been newly displaced, and in Ebola outbreaks, you know what displacement means,” he said.

The outbreak is concentrated so far in Ituri province and neighbouring North Kivu province, where an estimated two million people were forced to flee their homes in recent years as a result of insurgencies and conflict. Thousands are still in camps with little access to basic hygiene products. Some are using ashes to wash their hands because of shortages of water and soap, according to a report by a Congolese media outlet, Radio Okapi.

Canadian researchers are likely to be involved in the global hunt for vaccines and treatments to respond to the Ebola strain in the latest outbreak, experts say.

“We have some of the very best researchers of emerging infectious diseases in Canada, both at the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg and at universities and teaching hospitals across the country,” said Steven Hoffman, a professor of global health at York University and chief strategy officer at Wellcome Trust, which works on urgent health challenges.

“These emergencies remind us about how important these global health organizations are for tackling infectious disease threats that do not respect national borders,” he said.

Matthew Herder, the director of the Health Law Institute and an associate professor of medicine and law at Dalhousie University, said scientists at the National Microbiology Laboratory were key drivers to the development of the world’s first Ebola vaccine.

The vaccine was first deployed near the end of the world’s worst Ebola outbreak, from 2013 to 2016 in West Africa, which killed more than 11,300 people. While some of those who developed the vaccine have moved on to other places, there is still expertise at the Winnipeg lab that could be useful for the latest outbreak, Prof. Herder said.

He said the current Ebola outbreak illustrates the long-standing problem of the geographical barriers between where vaccines are made and where they are needed. But manufacturing capacity in Africa has begun to grow in recent years, he noted.

“We need to get a lot more local in our thinking, and regional, if we’re going to have real-time capacity to respond to these threats,” he said.