Congo Ebola outbreak worsens as hundreds of patient contacts untraced

Some 635 Ebola cases have been confirmed and 127 people have died from the dangerous infectious disease in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said on Thursday.

A further 19 cases and two deaths have been recorded in Uganda linked to the Congo outbreak, the Africa CDC said.

Poor contact tracing makes containment difficult

When presenting the new figures, Africa CDC Director General Jean Kaseya expressed particular concern about the low number of contacts of Ebola patients in Congo that had been identified and traced.

He said in his weekly report that just under 5,000 contacts of confirmed Ebola cases had been identified in Ituri province, where more than 600 confirmed cases make it the centre of the outbreak.

However, it was estimated that each patient in the region – characterized by high population density and high mobility – had around 40 contacts, which would amount to roughly 24,000 in total. Yet even of the contacts that had been identified, only around 57% were being traced, Kaseya said.

“If we don’t know these people, if we don’t have them in the list, if we don’t follow up, it means there is a huge risk of transmission to be sustained in the community,” Kaseya stressed.

He added that there were still confirmed Ebola cases that had not been isolated and placed in treatment centres. “It means if we don’t reach out to all of them, those we know they are already confirmed, those who are contact, we cannot say we can control this outbreak,” he warned.

The Ebola outbreak was affecting primarily younger people aged between 15 and 45 in a mining region, he said. These people frequently moved from place to place and had a large number of contacts.

Violence and equipment shortages hamper Ebola response

The eastern Congo region where the highly contagious infectious disease is circulating is also unsafe due to the activities of armed groups and militias. “We need really to have this ceasefire; Otherwise, this outbreak will continue,” Kaseya said in light of renewed fighting in the region.

A shortage of equipment and personnel for the burial of deceased Ebola patients was further complicating the situation. The dead are highly contagious and must be buried under specific safety protocols.

“Out of 49 teams we wanted to have when we conducted this assessment in 15 health zones, just a sample, we have available seven teams,” Kaseya said. There were only seven ambulances instead of the 98 required.

“We observe a rapid rise of cases every day,” said Babou Rukengeza, head of the Ebola emergency response for Save the Children in Ituri province.

Testing delays were occurring due to limited laboratory capacity, Rukengeza added. There were some mobile laboratories, but demand was very high, even though laboratory capacity had improved somewhat in the past week and this week, he said.

Ebola is a life-threatening disease. The virus is transmitted through physical contact and contact with bodily fluids.

The current outbreak is proving particularly difficult to contain, not least because there is as yet no vaccine or specific treatment for the Bundibugyo strain of the Ebola pathogen.