Italy’s Ministry of Health has ordered the isolation of a resident of the island of Sardinia who recently returned from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), following suspicions that he may have contracted the virus that causes Ebola.
The man, a resident of Cagliari, is currently being isolated at a local hospital in Sardinia.
He returned from Kinshasa, the capital of the DRC, where an Ebola outbreak (a highly contagious hemorrhagic fever) is ongoing. He arrived in Rome on Saturday (23) and subsequently took a flight to the Italian island, where he reported having experienced fever and a mild cough for several days.
According to Italian health authorities, the man visited relatives in Kinshasa in early May and did not leave the city during his stay. The outbreak zone, the province of Ituri, is located far from the capital.
Although the test results are not yet available, Italian health authorities do not currently consider the situation alarming.
In a statement, the Italian Ministry of Health said it would continue to provide updates as the epidemiological situation evolves and stressed that the risk in Italy remains very low.
So far, two individuals who underwent testing at the Sacco Hospital in Milan after returning from Uganda have tested negative for Ebola.
With a population of more than 100 million people, the Democratic Republic of the Congo declared an Ebola outbreak on May 15, affecting part of its vast territory and prompting the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.
The Ebola virus has now been detected in three provinces and in neighboring Uganda, where two new cases were confirmed on Friday, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the East African country to nine.
In the DRC, 246 deaths and more than 1,000 suspected cases have been recorded, according to a report released on Thursday by the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), the African Union’s public health agency.
On Saturday, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged communities affected in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo to find solutions adapted to their specific circumstances, reminding authorities that while they must tell people what to do, they must also “listen to them” in order to achieve a more effective response to the virus.
Source: Lusa
