Ebola – 131 deaths and 513 suspected cases
At least 131 deaths and more than 500 suspected cases have been reported in the latest Ebola outbreak in eastern DR Congo, the health ministry has said.
And the head of the World Health Organisation has expressed concern over the “scale and speed of the epidemic”.
The virus spread undetected for at least a few weeks since the first person died of the virus, health experts and aid workers said, and the delayed response is now complicating efforts to curb the outbreak.
DR Congo’s health minister, Samuel Roger Kamba, said 513 suspected cases and 131 deaths have been recorded, though he added: “These are suspected deaths, and investigations are under way to determine which ones are actually linked to the disease.”
The numbers mark a sharp increase from Monday, when officials said there were 300 suspected cases, and highlight the largely unknown scale of the outbreak.
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the emergence of cases in urban areas, the deaths of healthcare workers, significant population movement in the area and a lack of vaccines and therapeutics are the main reasons for concern “for further spread and further deaths”.
Health authorities say the outbreak, first confirmed on Friday, is caused by the Bundibugyo virus, a rare variant of the Ebola disease that has no approved therapeutics or vaccines.
The WHO declared the Ebola outbreak a public health emergency of international concern on Sunday.
Cases have been confirmed in Bunia, North Kivu’s rebel-held capital of Goma, Mongbwalu, Butembo, and Nyakunde.
There has also been one case and one death reported in Uganda in people who travelled from DR Congo.
An American doctor is among the cases in Bunia, the capital of Ituri province, said Dr Jean-Jacques Muyembe, medical director of the country’s national institute of bio-medical research.
Dr Peter Stafford had been treating patients at a hospital there when he developed symptoms, Serge, the organisation he works for, said in a statement.
Three others employees of Serge were working at the same hospital – including Dr Stafford’s wife – — but are not showing symptoms.
DR Congo has said the first person died from the virus on April 24 in Bunia and samples were sent to Kinshasa for testing.
The samples were initially tested for the more common type of Ebola – Zaire – but came back negative, and local authorities assumed it was not Ebola.
On May 5, the WHO was alerted to about 50 deaths in Mongbwalu, including four health workers, prompting further tests. The first confirmation of Ebola came on May 14.
Matthew M Kavanagh, director of the Georgetown University Centre for Global Health Policy and Politics, said that because of the false negative tests, “we are playing catch-up against a very dangerous pathogen”.
He criticised the Trump administration’s earlier decision to withdraw from the WHO and make deep cuts in foreign aid – “the exact surveillance system meant to catch these viruses early”, he said.