The Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has surpassed 1,000 confirmed cases, with health officials warning that the disease is still spreading faster than response teams can contain it.
Congo’s Ministry of Health said at least 100 people have recovered since the outbreak was declared on May 15, while 365 patients remain in hospital or isolation. The outbreak, concentrated in Ituri province but now affecting other areas, has killed more than 250 people and is already considered one of the fastest-growing Ebola outbreaks recorded in its first month.
The disease is caused by the rare Bundibugyo strain of the Ebola virus, for which there is no approved vaccine or specific treatment. That has made early detection, isolation, safe burials and contact tracing critical to containing the spread.
But health officials say contact tracing remains a major weakness. Authorities have reached only about 55 percent of identified contacts, while more than 35,000 people who may have been exposed still need to be traced. Officials have also not identified the outbreak’s first known patient, making it difficult to determine when and how the virus began spreading.
“If you want to control an outbreak, especially an Ebola outbreak, you must know the index case,” Africa CDC Director-General Dr Jean Kaseya said last week. “We don’t have confidence on when this outbreak started.”
The response has been complicated by insecurity in eastern Congo, where armed groups continue to attack communities and restrict access to affected areas. In Ituri, attacks by the Islamic State-linked Allied Democratic Forces have cut off some villages and forced civilians to flee, including to overcrowded displacement camps where disease can spread rapidly.
Health workers are also facing resistance from some communities angered by public health measures, including restrictions around burials. Early in the outbreak, protesters set fire to a hospital in Rwampara after they were prevented from taking the bodies of relatives who had died of Ebola for traditional burial.
Aid workers and health officials fear the true scale of the outbreak may be much larger than confirmed figures suggest, particularly in areas that remain inaccessible because of violence or displacement.
The World Health Organization said recent increases in confirmed cases partly reflect expanded testing and the processing of a backlog of samples. But officials warn that the peak of the outbreak may still lie ahead.
