The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has claimed more than 200 lives in its first month and is the worst known outbreak at this stage, Africa’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Thursday.
It showed that the country had recorded 875 confirmed Ebola cases, including 202 deaths, with a case fatality rate of 23%. A total of 67 recoveries had been reported, while 379 patients were in isolation or hospitalized.
The outbreak is concentrated in Congo’s eastern province of Ituri, which accounts for more than 90% of the cases.
Africa CDC official Wessam Mankoula told a media briefing that contact tracing remains an issue due to the area’s remoteness and ongoing insecurity in Ituri province.
“Due to security challenges and the difficult access of response teams from the CDC, WHO and other partners... We are still far from controlling the situation of this outbreak,” he added.
This week, a Red Cross official warned that the deadly Ebola outbreak in the DR Congo has yet to peak and could take a year to contain.
“We are afraid that this could last one year to end this disease,” Bruno Michon, operations manager for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, told reporters by video link from eastern Congo.
This 17th Ebola disease outbreak is caused by the rare Bundibugyo virus, which has no approved vaccines or treatments.
The northeastern DRC provinces—Ituri, North Kivu, and South Kivu—have long been gripped by conflict and mass displacement, severely complicating the response to the ongoing Ebola epidemic.
Also, the response has been hampered by a lack of treatment centers and by community resistance to stringent hygiene measures. Health officials said that, over a month since the outbreak was declared on May 15, the true scale was still unknown.
Cases have also spread across the border to Uganda, where 19 confirmed cases have been reported and two people have died.
