(AFP) – UN health chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus arrived on Saturday in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo province worst hit by a severe Ebola outbreak, an AFP journalist saw.
The director-general of the World Health Organization told reporters in Bunia, the capital of Ituri province, that the international community was helping the DRC government deal with the outbreak, but “community ownership is also important”.
He said this was the reason for his visit: “We are here to discuss with the community, to see how the response is going and what challenges there are to help.”
The highly contagious hemorrhagic fever is already present in three eastern DRC provinces and neighboring Uganda, where nine confirmed infections, including one death, have been recorded.
At least 1,077 suspected cases of Ebola have been reported in DRC since the outbreak was declared on May 15, including 246 deaths, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.
WHO has warned that the true reach of the outbreak in DRC, which is believed to have been spreading before it was detected, is likely to be much wider.
The vast, volatile Central African country – whose impoverished east has been plagued by three decades of conflict – has limited capacity to conduct laboratory tests to confirm cases.
Uganda closed its border with the DRC this week and ordered a 21-day quarantine for anyone arriving from that country.
On Friday, WHO announced that one patient recovered on Wednesday, left the hospital and was discharged into the community after two negative tests.
WHO’s Anais Legrand told reporters in Geneva that this was “the first” of patients who were confirmed Ebola carriers in the current outbreak.
Ebola, which spreads through close contact and bodily fluids, has killed more than 15,000 people in Africa over the past 50 years.
The deadliest outbreak in the DRC killed nearly 2,300 people out of 3,500 cases between 2018 and 2020.
Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said in a statement of the latest outbreak that “never have so many cases been recorded in the first days after an Ebola epidemic was declared”.
It said the number of medical experts being deployed in the field is still inadequate.
State services are largely lacking in Ituri province, where access is disrupted due to insecurity due to the presence of Islamic State-affiliated ADF militants and other militias, who regularly kill civilians.
Nearby North and South Kivu provinces, where Ebola cases have also spread, have been plagued by continuous violence for three decades.
Large parts of these areas are controlled by the Rwandan-backed armed group M23, which is battling government forces.
Millions of people have fled the fighting and live in displacement camps with poor sanitary conditions.
Nearly one million of those displaced are in Ituri province, where the possibility of the pandemic spreading in the camps has raised concerns.
“If Ebola comes, we will be destroyed because we are packed like sardines,” Dorcas Mapenzi said in Kingonze camp on the outskirts of Bunia.
No vaccine or specific treatment exists for the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, which is behind the current outbreak.
But the head of CDC Africa said on Thursday that the vaccine should be ready by the end of the year.
