WHO warns Ebola outbreak outpacing response in DRC

The World Health Organization has warned that the Ebola outbreak is outpacing response efforts and that countries neighbouring the Democratic Republic of Congo are at high risk.

“We are urgently scaling up operations, but at the moment the epidemic is outpacing us,” said WHO director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. He urged neighbouring countries to take immediate action.

Speaking at an online meeting of the African Union, Tedros said there had been 220 suspected deaths so far in the current outbreak. He also said he would travel to the DRC on Tuesday with Chikwe Ihekweazu, executive director of WHO’s health emergencies programme.

Tedros spoke as attacks by residents on health facilities in Ituri province, the centre of the outbreak, hampered the response. On Saturday and again on Sunday, residents of Mongbwalu town attacked the Mongbwalu general referral hospital.

Dr Richard Lokodu, medical director of the facility, told Reuters that 18 Ebola patients had fled on Saturday after unidentified individuals burned tents erected by Médecins Sans Frontières where patients were being isolated. The hospital came under four waves of attacks on Sunday by young people mobilised by relatives of a religious leader who died of Ebola. Seven other patients escaped, and Congolese police and soldiers had to intervene to restore order.

A suspected patient in critical condition with haemorrhaging died in the second attack while trying to flee from his bed. The attackers had wanted the bodies of Ebola victims released for burial, Lokodu said.

In a similar incident, a crowd on Thursday set fire to a treatment centre in Rwampara, near Bunia, after authorities refused to give them the body of a victim they wanted to bury themselves. The burial of bodies, which can be highly contagious, is handled by authorities to contain the disease. Some families prefer traditional burials that involve washing and touching the body, a practice that has been shown to spread the disease in previous outbreaks.

Earlier this month, Tedros declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern after more than 300 suspected cases and 88 deaths were reported in the DRC and two deaths in neighbouring Uganda. On Monday, Uganda announced two more Ebola cases, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the country to seven. The new cases are both Ugandan health workers in a private health facility in the capital, Kampala, the country’s health ministry said.

The outbreak is caused by the rare Bundibugyo ebolavirus, which has no approved treatment or vaccine. The hotspots are Rwampara, Mongbwalu, Nyankunde and Bunia areas in the north-east DRC province of Ituri. Cases have also been reported in Butembo and rebel-controlled Goma, both in North Kivu province, and Bukavu city in South Kivu province.

On Monday, Tedros said containing the outbreak was complicated by insecurity in Ituri and North Kivu and the lack of an approved vaccine.