WHO chief says progress is being made on Ebola outbreak in central Africa
Declared on 15 May in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the outbreak has so far been confirmed in 359 people, among them 61 who have died.
The Ebola outbreak tearing through central Africa was already well advanced by the time health officials identified it, the head of the World Health Organization said Wednesday, even as he stressed that efforts to contain the virus are beginning to gain ground.
Declared on 15 May in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the outbreak has so far been confirmed in 359 people, among them 61 who have died.
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Health officials caution, however, that the true toll may be considerably higher, with signs the virus had been circulating undetected well before it was officially identified.
“The outbreak had a big head-start and we’re still behind,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters at the UN health agency’s headquarters in Geneva, while adding that “we’re catching up”.
Even so, serious obstacles remain, he said, warning that “the virus is ahead of us… we need to move faster”.
From the outset, the response has faced steep odds. The outbreak is centred in Ituri, a region where decades of armed conflict have uprooted millions of people and pushed many into overcrowded camps.
Insecurity, weak testing capacity, slow contact tracing and mistrust within parts of the population are all hampering the response, he said.
Compounding those difficulties, there is no vaccine or approved treatment for Bundibugyo, the rare Ebola strain driving the current outbreak.
Spread through close contact and bodily fluids, Ebola has claimed more than 15,000 lives across Africa over the past 50 years.
The current outbreak – the 17th recorded in the DRC – has so far produced 344 confirmed Ebola cases across three provinces, including 60 deaths, according to the WHO.
The UN health agency has also recorded 116 suspected cases.
Fifteen cases, including one death, have also been reported in neighbouring Uganda, among them a Congolese resident who arrived there after first travelling to the United Arab Emirates.
“WHO is working with public health authorities in Uganda and the UAE to gather additional information, assess the risk of exposure during travel, and to facilitate contact tracing,” he said.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO, in eastern DRC last week
Accelerate contact tracing
The agency has assessed the outbreak risk as “very high” nationally, “high” across the region and “low” globally.
While the WHO supports exit screening at airports, ports and border crossings in affected countries to help curb the virus’s spread, it said broader restrictions are doing more harm than good.
“Blanket travel restrictions imposed by some countries are disrupting supply chains and hindering the response,” Dr Tedros warned.
“We ask countries that have imposed blanket travel restrictions to lift them.”
Instead, he said, containing the outbreak will depend on sharply strengthening and accelerating the response on the ground, including by decentralising laboratory testing in Ebola hotspots.
Right now, only about 45% of known contacts of Ebola patients have been followed up, the WHO chief said.
“To get ahead of the outbreak, we need to get that number up to above 90%.”
Abdi Rahman Mahamud, the WHO’s emergency alert and response director, told reporters that more than 1,400 tests have been carried out so far.
But with decentralisation across five priority sites – Mongbwalu, Beni, Aru, Nyakunde and Tchomia – it should soon be possible “to do 1,000 tests a day.”
