The director general of the World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday voiced concern about the “scale and speed” of the latest Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The WHO is holding an emergency meeting later on Tuesday in Geneva to discuss developments in Ituri province and other parts of eastern DRC.
The outbreak involves a rare strain of Ebola, called Bundibugyo, for which these is no recognized vaccine. It is also taking place in remote parts of the country, making the lab testing of suspected cases slow and challenging.
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What do we know about the suspected and confirmed caseload, death toll?
Congolese Health Minister Samuel Roger Kamba spoke on national television early on Tuesday, giving an update on the recorded progress of the hemorrhagic fever.
“We have recorded roughly 131 deaths in total and we have around 513 suspected cases,” Kamba said. “The deaths we are reporting are all the deaths we have identified in the community, without necessarily saying that they are all linked to Ebola.”
Late last week, authorities had cited 91 probable deaths out of 350 suspected cases.
Germany’s Health Ministry on Tuesday said it was preparing to treat a US doctor who has contracted the virus after a request from the US, based on the shorter flight times and past German experience treating the virus. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had already announced the infection and the plan to send the patient to Germany.
Many of the cases logged so far are in the northeastern Ituri and North Kivu provinces, near the border to Uganda, which has also recorded two cases among people who traveled from the DRC.
This includes cities like Bunia, Butembo and one case in North Kivu’s capital Goma, which was seized by the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group last year.
The area is a gold mining hub and frequently unstable.
What did the WHO’s Tedros Ghebreyesus say about the outbreak?
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who on Saturday declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern, told the World Health Assembly in Geneve on Tuesday that he had not taken this decision “lightly.”
“I’m deeply concerned about the scale and speed of the epidemic,” Tedros said.
He said the outbreak epicenter was in the Ituri province, and that 30 cases had been laboratory-confirmed in that region in the meantime.
“Uganda has also informed WHO of two confirmed cases in the capital of Kampala, including one death among two individuals who travelled from DRC,” Tedros said.
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The WHO would hold an emergency meeting on its response later on Tuesday, he said. The panel is expected to discuss issues like organizing supplies of personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare workers, and also what potential vaccine options might exist or warrant testing.
Several relatively new Ebola vaccines, particularly for the more common and more lethal Zaire strain, do exist. But none are formally recognized as effective, at least as yet, against the much rarer Bundibugyo strain.
There are only two Bundibugyo outbreaks prior to this one on record, in 2007-8 and 2012.
What is Ebola?
First identified in 1976, Ebola is a deadly viral disease spread primarily through direct contact with bodily fluids of symptomatic patients or the deceased. It can cause severe bleeding and organ failure and is thought to originate in bats. Fatality rates in past outbreaks have ranged from roughly 25 to 90% depending on the strain, the location, and other factors.
This is the 17th Ebola outbreak in the central African country. The deadliest claimed nearly 2,300 lives between 2018 and 2020.
The most recent outbreak, between September and December last year, led to 45 deaths, according to the WHO.
Edited by: Dmytro Hubenko
