The World Health Organization has warned that the current Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo is outpacing response efforts and that neighbouring countries face high risk. WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the agency is urgently scaling up operations but the epidemic is moving faster than the response, and he urged neighbouring states to take immediate action.
Speaking to an online African Union meeting, Tedros said there have been 220 suspected deaths so far in the outbreak and said he will travel to the DRC on Tuesday with Chikwe Ihekweazu, executive director of WHO’s health emergencies programme.
Response work in Ituri province, the epicentre of the outbreak, has been hampered by attacks on health facilities. Residents twice assaulted the Mongbwalu general referral hospital over the weekend, following an earlier incident when tents used by Médecins Sans Frontières for patient isolation were burned. The hospital’s medical director, Dr Richard Lokodu, said 18 Ebola patients fled after the tents were torched. On Sunday the facility endured four waves of attacks by young people reportedly mobilised by relatives of a religious leader who had died of Ebola; seven additional patients escaped and police and soldiers were called in to restore order. A suspected patient in critical condition died while trying to flee during the second attack.
Attackers have demanded that authorities release the bodies of Ebola victims for family-led burials. In a separate incident on Thursday, a crowd set fire to a treatment centre in Rwampara near Bunia after officials refused to hand over a body. Authorities handle burials because bodies can be highly contagious; some families insist on traditional rites involving washing and touching the deceased, practices which have driven transmission in past outbreaks.
Earlier this month Tedros declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern after more than 300 suspected cases and 88 deaths were reported in the DRC and two deaths in neighbouring Uganda. On Monday Uganda reported two more confirmed cases, bringing its total to seven; the new infections are both Ugandan health workers at a private facility in Kampala.
The outbreak is caused by the rare Bundibugyo ebolavirus, for which there is no approved treatment or vaccine. Hotspots include Rwampara, Mongbwalu, Nyankunde and Bunia in north-east Ituri, a commercial and migration hub and gold-rich area where long-running conflict between militias aligned with the Hema and Lendu ethnic groups has killed more than 50,000 people since 1999.
Cases have also been reported in Butembo and the rebel-controlled city of Goma in North Kivu, and in Bukavu in South Kivu. Tedros warned that insecurity in Ituri and North Kivu, together with the lack of an approved vaccine for this strain, complicates containment efforts.
Reuters contributed to this report.
