More than 2,000 people have died in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s latest Ebola outbreak, which is rapidly approaching the country’s deadliest epidemic on record.
Authorities declared the outbreak on 15 May after the virus struck the conflict-ridden eastern and northeastern regions, although health officials believe transmission had already been underway for weeks.
The crisis is the DRC’s 17th Ebola outbreak and has already become the largest in the country’s history. Sania Nishtar, chief executive of the Gavi global vaccine alliance, warned that it “could well become the largest outbreak ever”.
Congolese health authorities say 2,011 people have died among 4,381 confirmed cases of the virus.
The outbreak was first identified in northeastern Ituri province before spreading to other areas, particularly North Kivu, where weak health systems and limited government presence have made containing the virus more difficult.
The estimated case fatality rate stands at 45.9%, according to Congolese health authorities.
“We haven’t reached the peak yet,” Health Minister Samuel Roger Kamba said in an interview shared on X by his ministry.
“Within the next three months, we expect to have already brought the spread under control and to start seeing it decline,” he added.
‘Slow’ response
Fighting involving armed groups, combined with deep mistrust among local communities, has slowed efforts to identify cases, trace contacts and deliver treatment in the affected provinces.
“We are only seeing 30% (of infected people), where 70% of people are dying at home. This is why this Ebola is different,” Mohamed Yakub Janabi, the World Health Organization’s regional director for Africa, told reporters on Monday in Bunia, the capital of Ituri province.
Jean-Jacques Muyembe, the Congolese virologist who helped discover Ebola in 1976, described the response as “slow and ineffective” in an interview published by Le Monde on Tuesday.
“There is an internal problem at the level of the national coordination of the response,” he said.
“Everyone wanted to show they were doing something, even though nothing had actually been organised,” he added.
Clinical trials
WHO vaccine experts on Friday recommended a full-scale human trial of the only approved Ebola vaccine to determine whether it can provide protection against the strain now circulating in the DRC, for which no specific vaccine is currently available.
The Ervebo vaccine has been shown to be safe and effective against the more common Zaire strain of the Ebola virus. WHO experts said preliminary evidence, including findings from animal studies, suggested it could also offer some protection against the rare Bundibugyo strain responsible for the current outbreak in the DRC.
Gavi, the global vaccine alliance founded in 2000 to help lower-income countries obtain affordable vaccines, holds a stockpile of 500,000 Ervebo doses.
The alliance said doses would be supplied from that reserve for the trials, with some already positioned in the DRC.
Two possible Bundibugyo vaccines are undergoing early-stage human clinical trials, while researchers are developing a third candidate for testing.
Ebola spreads through contact with bodily fluids and can cause severe haemorrhagic fever.
Over the past 50 years, the disease has killed more than 15,000 people across Africa.
