Africa CDC says Ebola outbreak in DR Congo still not under control
Africa’s top public health agency says the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is still not under control six months after it was declared on 15 May. Jean Kaseya, director-general of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, told Reuters on Sunday that if the epidemic is not stopped now it would become the worst Ebola outbreak the world will have seen. Government figures put the toll at more than 11,200 cases and 5,500 deaths. Kaseya said more than 80 percent of new cases emerge outside contact lists and over 65 percent of deaths have occurred in communities rather than health centres.
The cause is the rare Bundibugyo strain, which can produce haemorrhagic fever and kills about half of those it infects. Cases have been reported in East, Central and West Africa — the widest geographic spread of any Ebola outbreak on the continent — and eight of the DRC’s 26 provinces are affected. It is already the second-largest and second-deadliest outbreak on record, behind the 2014–2016 West African epidemic that infected more than 28,600 people and killed more than 11,000. Delayed detection, conflict and strained services have sped transmission. Kaseya called donor–government coordination “a collective failure”: only $1.3bn of $2.9bn pledged has been released. Africa CDC is working with Kinshasa to avoid duplicated spending and to digitise payrolls for health workers unpaid for months. No vaccine or treatment is specific to Bundibugyo; the World Health Organization this month approved trials of two new vaccines, with results expected in early 2027. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said transmission is slowing in several early epicentres and that trials, including Tumaini, are advancing; WHO also said at least 3,000 people in the DRC have recovered and gone home.
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