Health workers will go door-to-door delivering mosquito nets and antimalarial drugs to 450,000 residents in the city of Beni, which is the current epicenter of the Ebola outbreak.
Beni has seen eight times more malaria cases in 2018 than in the year prior. Health officials believe children with malaria who visit health centers are likely also contracting Ebola at these facilities. Reducing malaria cases will free up more time and resources for health workers to treat Ebola patients, while also keeping Congo residents away from the health centers, where they could contract the virus.
“It will make things a lot easier if malaria is taken out of the equation,” Dr. Stefan Hoyer, a medical officer with the World Health Organization, told Reuters. “We can assume that the suspected Ebola cases to be triaged would at least go down by half.”
The WHO reported 421 confirmed and probable Ebola cases, along with 241 confirmed and probable deaths linked to the outbreak, as of Nov. 24.
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