One hundred days into the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the response is still struggling to keep pace as the virus overwhelms the systems trying to contain it. The death toll has accelerated sharply in recent weeks, with roughly half of the more than 2,500 deaths recorded in the past 20 days. It is the deadliest ever outbreak in the DRC, as well as the fastest growing anywhere, with more than 5,000 confirmed infections in just over three months.
Ebola has now been detected in an area bigger than France, while more than half of deaths happen outside treatment centres. It suggests many are dying in their communities without receiving care, aid agencies have warned, allowing the virus to continue to spread before cases are detected. Around four in five new infections are also being detected outside known chains of transmission, meaning the epidemic continues to shift beyond the reach of existing surveillance.
This Ebola outbreak, caused by the rare Bundibugyo strain for which there is little recognised treatment and no cure, has surpassed the total number of cases recorded during the DRC’s previous worst outbreak, which lasted two years from 2018 to 2020. It is also spreading significantly quicker than the worst Ebola crisis ever, the West African Ebola outbreak of 2014 to 2016, which killed more than 11,000 people. That outbreak took a year to reach 2,000 deaths.
It is leaving almost two children a day orphaned, with at least 180 children who have lost both parents or primary caregivers, according to Save the Children. They face increased risks of trafficking, exploitation, violence, forced recruitment by armed groups and severe psychological distress. As it grows “exponentially”, the response is only “covered for the next weeks, and very soon funding will run out,” the United Nations’s Senior Ebola Coordinator Julien Harneis adds at a press briefing into the weekend.
International pledges to help the response have exceeded the amount requested, he said, but less than half of the money has actually been disbursed. Response efforts have been hampered by conflict, displacement, weak health infrastructure and abrupt cuts to global aid, such as the decimation of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) last year. Dr Manenji Mangundu, Oxfam’s country director in DRC, says: “This is a disaster unfolding right before our eyes, and it is the result of political choices.
We urgently need proper funding to be restored. Without it, the virus will continue to spread, and more lives will be lost.” Rory Stewart, who previously served as the UK's Africa minister, has said of the widespread aid cuts: "Pandemic preparedness – in other words, dealing with an Ebola outbreak or even a new version of a Covid outbreak – requires lots of people on the ground in places like DRC or Uganda who are able to detect cases, respond to them, quarantine and prepare responses." “It’s all the infrastructure behind that which is being undermined at the moment. And that’s a real threat, of course, to the world,” he told BBC Radio 4 earlier in the summer.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
