WHO chief urges high-risk countries to act as Ebola spreads rapidly

Alarm is spreading beyond the Democratic Republic of Congo as the Ebola outbreak gathers pace, with the head of the World Health Organization warning that neighbouring states face grave danger unless they move swiftly to contain the virus.

“Countries bordering DRC are at especially high risk and should take immediate action,” said WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who said he would travel to the DRC tomorrow, heading to the vast central African nation at the heart of the current outbreak.

“The outbreak is spreading rapidly,” Dr Tedros told a virtual ministerial meeting on the viral haemorrhagic fever, which is transmitted through direct contact with bodily fluids.

The disease can trigger severe bleeding and organ failure.

“First, the delay in detecting the outbreak means that we are now playing catch-up with a very fast-moving epidemic. We are urgently scaling up operations but at the moment, the epidemic is outpacing us,” he said via video link from Geneva.

He also warned that the eastern provinces of the DRC, where the outbreak was first identified in mid-May, “are highly insecure, with intensified fighting in recent months (and) there is also significant distrust of outside authorities among the local population”.

Thirdly, he pointed out, there were “no approved vaccines or therapeutics” for the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola behind the current outbreak.

The WHO has recorded 10 confirmed Ebola deaths and 220 suspected deaths in the DRC since mid-May, along with another 900 suspected cases since Kinshasa declared the outbreak on 15 May.

The United Nations agency said the real reach of the virus – which experts believe may have been spreading unnoticed for some time – was likely far broader.

Health workers carry out temperature screenings and health checks on travellers at the Kanyaruchinya checkpoint in Goma

One death has been confirmed in neighbouring Uganda, where six more people have also been confirmed infected.

Ten other African countries are “at risk” of infection, the African Union’s health agency, Africa CDC, warned on Saturday.

They are Angola, Burundi, the Central African Republic, the Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Zambia.

Building trust

Africa CDC head Jean Kaseya said “high mobility and insecurity” were helping drive the regional spread of the outbreak, which the WHO has declared an international emergency.

Insecurity remains a major barrier in eastern DRC, a region battered for three decades by conflict involving a long list of armed groups.

State services in rural parts of Ituri province have been largely absent for decades.

South Kivu province is under the control of the M23 armed group, which has never handled an epidemic like Ebola.

Dr Tedros said closing the trust gap in communities hit by Ebola would be critical.

Two hospitals in Ituri have come under attack from suspicious locals over the past five days – one in Mongbwala, where the outbreak was first detected, and another in Rwampara, where tents used to isolate Ebola patients were set ablaze.

The violence in Rwampara broke out after the family of a dead man was stopped from taking his body away for burial because of contamination risks.

“Loved ones are throwing themselves at the bodies, touching the corpses… while organising mourning rituals bringing together loads of people,” said Jean Marie Ezadri, a civil society leader in Ituri.

Dr Tedros said the WHO was sending funding, medical supplies and staff into the DRC to support the authorities, while accelerating clinical trials for possible treatments.

“It will get worse before it gets better,” he said.

“But we know this virus and we know how to stop it.”

The WHO has declared ⁠the ‌outbreak of the rare Bundibugyo strain of Ebola a public health emergency of international concern.

Ebola has killed more than 15,000 people across Africa in the past half-century.