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Health Check: Covid-19 in DRC

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The International Federation of the Red Cross in the DRC

2020/05/27 GMT

Covid-19 in DRC

BBC World Service - Health Check, Covid-19 in DRC

Covid-19 in DRC; coronavirus and kidney disease; Covid information in Somali in Norway.

Health workers in the Democratic Republic of Congo are coping with two disease epidemics, Covid-19 and Ebola. In April the country was preparing to celebrate the end of the Ebola outbreak that had killed more than two thousand people, when another seven cases appeared. And Covid has been in the DRC since March. Robert Ghosn, Head of Operations for the Red Cross in the DRC, tells Claudia Hammond how health workers have learnt to deal with Covid from the Ebola outbreak. Ebola survivor and Red Cross volunteer Ozee explains how he uses community radio and face to face meetings to communicate about reducing transmission of both diseases. 

In the UK a quarter of those with Covid-19 on ventilators in intensive care develop acute kidney injury. Kirsty Armstrong, Clinical Lead for Renal Services at Southampton General Hospital in Southern England talks to Erika Wright about why this is happening. 

In Norway public health experts discovered that people born in Somalia are more than ten times as likely as the general population to contract the coronavirus. A group of Norwegian Somalis, including student Habon Beggsi, decided to make sure their community had correct information about how to reduce their chances of getting Covid-19. 

And James Gallagher, BBC Health Correspondent, discusses why vaccination campaigns against diseases such as measles and meningitis are not happening during the pandemic, the ethics of doing vaccine trials in which subjects are deliberately infected with coronavirus and why the WHO has stopped a Covid-19 trial of the anti-malarial drug, hydrochloroquine.

Presenter: Claudia Hammond 
Editor: Deborah Cohen

(Picture: The International Federation of the Red Cross in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Photo credit: Alexis Huguet/AFP/Getty Images.)

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