Latest: About 400 to 500 new Ebola infections are still being identified every week in eastern Congo, WHO’s Chikwe Ihekweazu told journalists in Geneva on Friday, even as transmission has fallen significantly in the former Ituri hotspots of Bunia, Mongbwalu, Rampara and Nizi. The UN’s Ebola Response Coordinator, Julien Harneis, said Allied Democratic Forces fighters have killed more people than Ebola in recent days, and that contact tracing in areas where the group operates is hazardous; WHO condemned an attack in Cantine-Aloya in North Kivu that killed 66 civilians, including three health workers, and the looting of three health facilities. The World Food Programme warned that nearly 29 million people in Congo face acute food insecurity, most of them in the conflict and Ebola affected east and northeast.
Confirmed Ebola cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo have surpassed 11,000, reaching 11,042, and 5,387 people have died, according to government data reported by Reuters on Tuesday. The outbreak of the Bundibugyo strain, declared in mid-May, has affected eight of Congo’s 26 provinces, and many deaths have occurred outside treatment centres.
Reuters reported that delayed detection, conflict and strained health services have driven a faster spread than in previous outbreaks, and that the disease has now been reported in East, Central and West Africa, the widest geographic spread of any Ebola outbreak on the continent. It is the second largest and deadliest on record, behind only the 2014 to 2016 West African outbreak, and there are no approved treatments or vaccines for the Bundibugyo strain.