The Democratic Republic of the Congo is grappling with a rapidly escalating Ebola outbreak that has claimed over 2,300 lives, marking the country’s deadliest encounter with the virus to date.
This outbreak, which is sweeping through one of DRC’s most vulnerable regions, has been declared the fastest-growing Ebola emergency ever recorded. Government figures reveal 4,945 individuals have contracted the virus, and among them, 2,325 have died.
As the DRC experiences its 17th outbreak of this disease, the current situation has surpassed the devastation seen during the 2018-2020 outbreak, where 2,299 fatalities were noted out of 3,481 cases.
Recent reports indicate 101 new infections and 33 additional deaths in just the last 24 hours. On a more hopeful note, over 1,000 people have managed to recover, though 730 remain in hospitals or isolated settings.
This outbreak is setting a grim record, infecting and claiming lives at an unprecedented pace. According to the World Health Organization, it is poised to exceed the casualties of the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, which resulted in more than 11,000 deaths, the highest on record.
Trish Newport, emergency coordinator with Doctors Without Borders, said the limited community engagement in the outbreak remains a key challenge.
“The community needs to be aware about the outbreak,” she told The Associated Press news agency, adding that people “need to be involved in the response, and they need to know what the signs and symptoms are and what to do if they get sick. And this today is not happening in every single place where there are Ebola cases”.
Starting from the first confirmed case, the outbreak reached 2,000 killed almost three times faster than in the 2014-16 outbreak.
Some families have lost up to 15 of their relatives in the epicentre, the Ituri province, Newport said.
“We rapidly need to scale up to be able to prevent more deaths from happening, more families and communities from being impacted,” she added.
There are no approved vaccines or treatments for the rare Bundibugyo virus responsible for the current outbreak across six provinces in Congo’s east. Trials for those are ongoing in Ituri.
Most new cases and deaths are being reported outside of the people being monitored. Challenges facing medical teams dealing with the outbreak also include strikes by some unpaid health workers, threats by rebel groups, anger from long-traumatised communities, bad roads making it difficult to reach all the affected territories, and misinformation claiming that Ebola isn’t real.
The WHO warned over the weekend that the outbreak is still moving at an “exceptional pace” ahead of efforts to track it, noting that it reached a weekly record of 579 cases and 304 deaths in the previous week.
“A substantial scaling up of response activities is underway to get ahead of the outbreak,” the UN health agency said.
Experts believe the virus was spreading in the mining town of Mongbwalu as early as February — months before authorities declared the outbreak on 15 May.
On Friday, UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher announced the allocation of an additional $30.5 million and the deployment of 20 more staff to aid the response on the frontlines.
“This is a wake-up call,” Fletcher said. “We need speed, scale and solidarity before this virus gets even further ahead of us.”