A. Situation analysis
Description of the disaster
On 4 December 2015, two children aged 9 and 5 from a hunter family in Lengo village, 15 kilometres from Bakouma in the Mbomou Province, eastern Central African Republic (CAR), were taken to the Bakouma Health Centre suffering from an unidentified disease with rashes all over their bodies. On the 10 December 2015, in response to the outbreak in Bangassou, the WHO facilitated an initial assessment carried out by the Ministry of Health (MoH) in the affected province and a joint mission was undertaken by the health district and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Belgium. On 17 December 2015, the children were transferred to the Bangassou Regional Hospital, run by an international non-governmental organization (NGO) and MSF. While at the hospital, the children’s condition got worse. Samples were taken and sent to the Pasteur Institute of Bangui for laboratory testing.
On the 29 December 2015, following the testing of samples and diagnosis, the Minister of Health declared a Monkey-pox outbreak and requested World Health Organization (WHO)’s support in carrying out further analysis and immediate response.
Given the relative rareness of the Monkey pox, the CAR population’s limited knowledge on how the disease is spread (mostly through contact with animals, or direct contact with an infected person), there has been an urgent need to contain the outbreak.