DR Congo’s Ebola death toll hits 2,500

The death toll of the Ebola outbreak has risen to 2,500 in Democratic Republic of Congo according to United Nations Ebola coordinator Julien Harneis who is scrambling to pull more funds to contain the virus and prevent it from spreading to neighbouring countries.

“The Ebola outbreak is growing exponentially,” Mr Harneis said on Friday in a video statement in which he appealed for aid, explaining that available funds would no longer be sufficient.

He projected that the existing funds will be exhausted in weeks, warning of a looming crisis of it was not urgently replenished.

“The epidemic is spreading to an area that is bigger than France, and the outbreak is growing faster and wider ​than the Ebola response. And all of this is happening in an area that has had ​three decades of conflict and is generating huge humanitarian needs,” said the UN Ebola coordinator.

Mr Harneis warned that at least 160 healthcare workers had already contracted Ebola virus, adding that 43 of them have already died.

The Bundibugyo strain of the Ebola virus has no known cure or treatment. He warned that scores of Congolese had begun taking out their fear of the virus on health workers.

“And then, when we do respond, apart from the threat from the virus, healthcare workers and frontline workers have been attacked by youths, ambulances have been burned and stoned, and the healthcare facilities have been attacked,” he said. “Fear translates into angry young men who start throwing stones at ​their object of fear, ​the ambulance.”