The Ebola death toll in DRC has passed 1,000, the World Health Organisation confirmed on Wednesday, as an outbreak first declared in May continues to spread faster than any previous epidemic of the virus in Central Africa.
The Democratic Republic of Congo’s Ministry of Health, in a situation report released on Wednesday, said the country had recorded 2,473 confirmed cases and 999 deaths as of 20 July. Uganda’s health authorities added 20 confirmed cases and two deaths, taking the combined Ebola death toll in DRC and Uganda to 1,001.
Officials in Kinshasa traced the outbreak to Ituri Province in the country’s mineral rich northeast, where it was declared on 15 May. The virus, identified as the Bundibugyo strain, later spread to North Kivu, South Kivu, Haut-Uele and Tshopo provinces.
The rising Ebola death toll in DRC now ranks among the highest recorded for a single outbreak since the virus was first identified in the country in 1976. This is the DRC’s 17th Ebola outbreak, according to the health ministry, and it has moved with unusual speed through communities already strained by conflict.
Speaking at a press briefing in Geneva on 16 July, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the outbreak had become the third largest on record for the disease. He told reporters it had expanded faster in the past month than any previous Ebola outbreak the organisation had tracked.
Tedros also confirmed that Uganda’s last known patient was discharged from care on 16 July, triggering the mandatory 42 day countdown health authorities require before a country can be declared free of active transmission. Ugandan officials say most of their cases involved Congolese nationals who crossed the border, and the country has gone three weeks without registering a new infection.
The DRC’s Ministry of Health said 737 patients remained in isolation or under hospital treatment as of 20 July, while 482 had recovered from the virus. Ebola spreads through close contact with bodily fluids from an infected person, which has made containment difficult in areas with weak health infrastructure and frequent population movement.
Jean Kaseya, Director General of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, warned delegates at an African Union health summit in Accra on Tuesday that the Ebola death toll in DRC and Uganda could climb further and become one of the worst on the continent’s record if containment is not strengthened quickly. He called for greater political commitment from African governments, sustainable domestic health financing and response systems led by African institutions.
Kaseya said funding requirements for the response had jumped from an estimated 518 million US dollars in June to 1.4 billion dollars, a sign of how quickly the crisis has grown. The climbing Ebola death toll in DRC has placed additional strain on a health system already dealing with insecurity in the eastern provinces, where armed groups operate with relative freedom.
Aid workers on the ground say the security situation in Ituri has slowed contact tracing efforts considerably. Doctors Without Borders, which runs emergency programmes in the provincial capital Bunia, has said the poverty and violence in the region demand far greater resources than earlier outbreaks required.
There is currently no approved vaccine or treatment specifically for the Bundibugyo strain behind this outbreak, unlike the Zaire strain for which vaccines exist elsewhere. The WHO says trials for two experimental treatments, a candidate vaccine and a post exposure prophylaxis are underway, and it has described early results as encouraging.
Health authorities in both countries say tracking the Ebola death toll in DRC and Uganda will remain a daily task until transmission chains are fully broken. With cases now confirmed in five DRC provinces, officials expect the Ebola death toll in DRC to keep rising for months even as new infections in Uganda have slowed to a trickle.
