Ebola Outbreak Spreads to Sixth DRC Province
WHO Warns It Could Become the Deadliest Known Outbreak
The Ebola outbreak—on track to becoming the deadliest known in the world—has spread to a sixth province in the northeastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), on the border with the Central African Republic (CAR).
A motorcycle taxi rider, who had travelled from Isiro, capital of the neighbouring Haut-Uélé province, died in the Bas-Uélé province’s capital, Buta, after receiving treatment in several hospitals. He posthumously tested positive for the Bundibugyo virus causing the current outbreak.
Jean Kaseya, the director general of the continent’s top health body, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said on Thursday, 13 August, that this is the first known case in Bas-Uélé.
The vastness of the province and its poor transport and communication infrastructure pose a challenge to an effective health response, complicated further by the presence of thousands of refugees who have fled violence in the neighbouring Central African Republic (CAR).
Armed violence is also hampering the response by health authorities in the other five provinces where the outbreak has spread, including North Kivu and South Kivu, large parts of whose mineral-rich land are occupied by the Rwandan army and its front, the M23 armed group.
The news of the outbreak reaching a sixth province came only a day after Tedros Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), warned that the outbreak is snowballing into the deadliest known in history.
“At its current pace [of spread], it’s on track to eclipse the West African Ebola outbreak of 2014 to 2016,” Ghebreyesus told the reporters on 12 August.
That outbreak a decade ago had spread to 10 countries, including the US and Italy, and infected about 28,600 people, killing over 11,000 of them, over the course of two years. In the first three months of that outbreak, 528 cases were confirmed in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, 337 of whom had died.
In the same time period since the current outbreak was declared in the DRC on 15 May, 4,665 confirmed cases had been reported as of 12 August. A total of 2,184 of them had died. With 3,979 of the confirmed cases and 1,726 of the deaths, Ituri, the epicentre of the outbreak, remains the worst-affected province.
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