Ebola outbreak outpacing containment effort, WHO chief warns

Caused by the rare Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, for which there are no vaccines or treatments, it has been extremely difficult to contain, according to experts on the ground. “The outbreak is spreading faster than our scale-up of the response, with new cases doubling in some hotspots over the past week alone,” Dr Tedros said on X. Part of the difficulty is that the virus was circulating undetected for weeks before the outbreak was formally declared in mid-May, leaving health officials even now racing to catch up with the spread. Prof Placide Mbala, director of research, clinical trials and innovation at Africa CDC, told the Telegraph: “It’s mostly the fact we arrived a bit late. It took us some time before we detected this virus outbreak. And when we detected the outbreak, we already had a total of I can say more than 200 suspected cases. It’s been difficult to catch up. That’s where we are.” While the DRC has a wealth of experience in tackling haemorrhagic fever outbreaks, the effects of that initial delay are still being felt. Prof Mbala said: “We have some experience dealing with the cases, the labs, the communication, the infection prevention and control. “We have some experience... But my observation is that we were very slow, and it’s why we’re in this situation. “We are slow detecting the people, slow responding, we are slow deploying people, we are slow to recruit the community healthcare workers to improve contact tracing, we are slow to deploy the safe burials.” DRC’s largest outbreak had previously been from 2018 to 2020, when 3,481 cases were recorded. The West Africa outbreak recorded 28,616 cases and 11,310 deaths according to the WHO. Prof Mbala said insecurity was also severely hampering attempts to curb the virus. The outbreak epicentre is in Ituri province, which has been wracked by ethnic strife for decades and is also home to militias competing to control mining. He said: “There are many, many mining groups controlling most of the mining places. We have a big issue with those places, because they are places where the response team cannot go.” Medics and aid workers have also been undermined by violent public distrust of their efforts. Locals in the area have either doubted the existence of the virus, or have accused health teams of deliberately spreading the infection, or somehow benefiting from it. More than a dozen health facilities have been set alight and several health workers have been killed. Prof Mbala said: “The local people, they also sometimes are very upset, because they believe that it’s a kind of a business, and people who are coming here, they are getting a lot of money, [so] don’t want this disease to stop.” He said he hoped that immunity was starting to rise in some areas and this would start to curb transmission. However there was also a risk that people fleeing the outbreak would spread the virus further afield. He said: “The second scenario is the fact we are seeing people moving from the affected area to new areas, to run away from the response team because they do not want to go to the treatment centre. “And in complicity with their family members living in other areas, they are now the ones who are spreading the disease to new areas “So we’ll see new places affected because people are moving around from the affected zone to the non-affected zone.” Protect yourself and your family by learning more about Global Health Security