Nine thousand, seven hundred and sixty-five people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have caught Ebola this year, and 4,727 of them have died. The figures come from the World Health Organization, which says the Bundibugyo strain, declared an outbreak in mid-May, has now reached eight provinces. The newest is Nord-Ubangi, in the northwest.
The outbreak started in the volatile east and keeps pushing into places that are harder to reach. Dr. Catherine Smallwood, the WHO incident manager in the country, said some locations take several days to reach by boat or motorcycle and cannot be reached by car or plane. About 30,000 contacts are being monitored every day over a three-week period.
“If we lift the foot off the pedal, the virus will resurge very quickly, will continue to spread to newly affected areas and pose a threat for the country, the region and the world at large,” Smallwood told journalists in Geneva, speaking from the eastern city of Bunia.
Families caught between disease and hunger
The toll goes beyond the dead. Smallwood described “an incredible permanent burden and loss of livelihoods in those families that are affected.”
David Stevenson, the World Food Programme’s representative in the DRC, told of Francine Birungi Amoti. She lost a child to Ebola. She is now raising her six surviving children and a baby left in her care, and she cannot tend her fields because violence makes the trip dangerous. “For Francine, food assistance means being able to feed the children in her care when reaching her fields could cost her life,” Stevenson said from Kinshasa. “This is what a crisis on top of a crisis looks like: disease and bereavement, compounded by insecurity and hunger.” The WFP is feeding families and building Ebola treatment centres.
Late detection, slow gains
Deaths outside recognised treatment centres are a warning sign, Smallwood said, because they point to cases found late in the community. That number fell over the past week, which the WHO reads as evidence that early detection and fast referral are working. Problems remain. In parts of the east, patients visit between two and five health facilities before anyone sends them to an Ebola treatment centre, which she called “a really, really big challenge.”
There is some progress. Care at the treatment centres has improved, and the WHO has more than 2,000 beds available against a target of 3,000. Some 2,600 people in the DRC have survived the disease, and clinics are opening for them to receive follow-up care, monitoring for the virus and psychosocial support.
Beyond the border
A smaller outbreak in Uganda was declared over in August. Cases have been confirmed in Kenya, Nigeria and France. Kenya recorded its first case and death earlier this month, a man who had worked in the DRC and flew home to Nairobi through Uganda. More than 100 of his contacts were traced, and some were due to finish their 21-day quarantine on Sunday and go home.
Dr. Neema Rusibamayila Kimambo, the WHO representative in Kenya, thanked them. “I think their sacrifice has been important in ensuring that the community is protected and that we don’t have community spread today,” she told UN News. She asked that nobody stigmatise those released, since leaving quarantine only means they met someone who had the disease.
“Africa is very interconnected and nobody is safe until everyone is safe,” Kimambo said. “So, as long as we have Ebola in DRC at the scale that it is, or in any other country, it means that we are not safe.”
