The death toll from the latest Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has surged past 1,000, marking the fastest spread of the virus ever recorded and triggering urgent warnings from health officials who fear the world is on the brink of an unprecedented catastrophe. Jean Kaseya, director-general of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, told a health conference in Ghana on Wednesday that 1,031 deaths have been confirmed since the Bundibugyo strain of the virus first emerged in May. The outbreak was officially declared on May 15 after several deaths were recorded in the northeastern province of Ituri, and it has since claimed lives at a pace that dwarfs any previous Ebola outbreak on record.
To put the speed of this crisis into perspective, the devastating 2013 to 2016 West Africa epidemic which remains the largest and deadliest in history took roughly eight months to reach 1,000 deaths across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The current outbreak in the DRC has crossed that same threshold in less than ten weeks. According to the country’s health ministry, 2,473 cases have been confirmed as of Monday, with at least 737 patients currently in isolation or hospitalised. Two people have also died from the virus in neighbouring Uganda, though that country has not reported any new infections in more than a month after discharging its last patient on July 16.
Kaseya delivered an impassioned plea for international action, warning that without immediate intervention the outbreak could spiral beyond control. These are people dying, he told conference attendees. They are dying because we don’t have vaccines, we don’t have medicine, we don’t have funding. The virus circulating in the DRC is the Bundibugyo variant, the rarest of the four Ebola strains known to affect humans and one for which there are currently no approved vaccines or treatments. That medical gap has left healthcare workers scrambling to contain an enemy they are ill-equipped to fight.
Thierno Balde, the World Health Organisation incident manager for Bundibugyo in the DRC, offered a sobering assessment on Tuesday when he told reporters that despite ongoing efforts to contain the virus, the outbreak remains ahead of us and we are still in a phase of catching up. Kaseya separately revealed he had written to US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr requesting the lifting of Ebola-related travel restrictions on Uganda given its progress toward being declared virus-free under WHO guidelines. The United States continues restricting entry for all travellers recently in the DRC and some who visited Uganda or South Sudan even as African health leaders argue such measures may hamper rather than help the coordinated response needed to stop the virus from spreading further.