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 (DRC) is still not under control six months after it was declared.

“If we don’t stop this outbreak now, it would be the worst Ebola outbreak that the world will have,” Jean Kaseya, director-general of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), told Reuters news agency on Sunday.

Since the outbreak was announced on May 15, more than 11,200 cases and 5,500 deaths have been recorded, according to government data.

Kaseya said that more than “80 percent of ‌new cases emerge outside contact lists and over 65 percent of deaths” have occurred in the community outside health centres.

Cases have now been reported in East, Central and West Africa, giving it the widest geographic spread of any Ebola outbreak on the continent to date.

“We are all in agreement today to say that this outbreak is still serious, and is ⁠still not under control,” Kaseya said.

The outbreak is caused by the rare Bundibugyo strain of the Ebola virus, which can trigger haemorrhagic fever.

It is the second-largest and second-deadliest Ebola outbreak on record, behind only the 2014-2016 West African outbreak. That epidemic infected more than 28,600 people and killed more than 11,000.

Eight of the DRC’s 26 provinces have been affected in the ongoing outbreak, and many deaths have occurred outside treatment centres.

Delayed detection, conflict and strained health services have led to a more rapid spread of the virus than in previous outbreaks.

Kaseya said coordination between DRC and donors remained a problem, calling it “a collective failure”.

Only $1.3bn of the $2.9bn pledged by donors to fight Ebola has been released, according to Kaseya.

“We are not pointing fingers,” he said, adding that Africa CDC was working closely with Kinshasa to ensure money isn’t wasted ‌through ‌duplication and that the DRC was working to digitise the payroll to health workers who “hadn’t been paid for months”.

Containment has been especially difficult because no vaccine or treatment has been developed specifically for the Bundibugyo strain, which kills about half of the people it infects.

Earlier this month, the World Health Organization (WHO) approved clinical trials of two new Ebola vaccines and said it expected results in early 2027.

“Transmission is slowing in several early epicentres, and clinical trials, including the Tumaini trial and new vaccine candidates, are advancing rapidly”, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote in a post on X.

The WHO said at least 3,000 people have recovered from Ebola virus disease in DRC and returned home.