2,000 dead in Congo’s fastest-growing Ebola outbreak

At least 2,000 people have died in Congo’s Ebola outbreak, the fastest-growing on record, as health authorities struggle to get help to remote areas due to rebel conflict, bad roads and work stoppages over payment issues.

Government data published overnight on Tuesday showed the outbreak had recorded a total of 4,381 confirmed cases, including 2,011 deaths. The death toll was reached almost three times faster than in the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak that was the worst in history.

The current outbreak was declared on May 15, but health authorities say sequencing showed it began months earlier, in February.

While it took about nine weeks for the outbreak to reach 1,000 deaths, it took just three weeks for the figure to double, evidence that the health crisis is moving faster than efforts to track and manage it.

The 2,000 death toll is “alarming” and requires response efforts to be stepped up in affected areas, said Dr Jean-Marie Akandabo, who helps manage patients at a clinic in Ituri.

It’s already the second-largest Ebola outbreak in history, only behind the 2014-2016 West Africa outbreak that had more than 28,000 cases, including more than 11,000 deaths.

The Ebola outbreak is unlike most previous ones because the rare Bundibugyo virus responsible for it has no approved vaccine or treatment. Clinical trials for those have begun in Ituri province, the epicentre of the outbreak, in eastern Congo.

Aid workers say the outbreak continues to outpace the response, which has expanded across the five affected eastern provinces. Many health workers have gone on strike to protest about non-payment since the outbreak was declared. The WHO has said most new cases are still being recorded outside the group of monitored contacts, showing that transmission remains beyond the control of health workers.

This outbreak has killed a higher percentage of cases because of limited care

Ebola can be caused by different types of virus. Although the type responsible for the 2014-16 outbreak is considered the deadliest, government data shows the Bundibugyo outbreak has killed a higher percentage of people because care and support are not reaching patients quickly enough. Many patients report symptoms late or not at all.

The outbreak has so far had a case fatality rate of 45.9%, more than the 39.6% rate recorded in the 2014-2016 West Africa outbreak.

We must not take this disease lightly, because it continues to kill and no one is safe

—  Dr Jean-Marie Akandabo

“In the absence of an effective vaccine, control (for the outbreak) rests on identifying cases and then nursing them in secure facilities until they recover or sadly perish,” said Paul Hunter, a professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia in the UK.

In a remote region hit by conflict and interrupted communications, routine surveillance can be very difficult, and “identifying cases early enough to prevent spread can be impossible,” said Hunter.

‘No one is safe’

Dr Akandabo in Ituri said the major challenges he’s seen are the limited care for patients and poor community engagement.

“We must not take this disease lightly, because it continues to kill and no one is safe,” Akandabo said.

The World Health Organisation said on Monday that at the onset of the outbreak in one of Congo’s most remote and vulnerable areas, some cases were wrongly attributed to malaria and typhoid and that early testing was conducted for the more common type of Ebola.

The WHO regional director for Africa, Dr Mohamed Yakub Janabi, told a news conference that officials are “chasing the virus; the virus is ahead of us.”

The first Ebola virus to be identified was in 1976 near the Ebola River in what is now Congo. The current outbreak is the 17th — and largest — the Central African nation has faced.

AP