Ebola: WHO alerts unknown disease transmission chains

“ Ainda there are chains of transmission that we do not know about,” said WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, at a time when the epidemic surpassed the “critical threshold” of 6,000 confirmed cases and more than 3,000 dead, affecting 60 health areas in six African provinces.

In a statement, the United Nations agency and its partners were concerned “that most deaths continue to occur in communities rather than in treatment centres and affect people who had not been identified as contacts.”.

In view of this scenario, the government-led response plan for the next six months requires 1.3 billion dollars (about 1.12 million euros), the organisation advances.

The WHO Director-General called on the Member States to “increase and accelerate” their financial contributions.

“ Let's put an end to this epidemic. The question is how quickly and how many lives will be lost by then,” he warned, adding that “the longer it takes, the greater the cost in human lives and resources.”.

According to the WHO, despite the health crisis, schools reopened on Tuesday in the affected areas, a step that is classified as fundamental for children.

The UN and partners have strengthened the prevention of Ebola in schools in DRCongo with awareness-raising and sanitation campaigns, and have already trained 150 trainers to instruct more than 18,000 education professionals.

However, two thirds of schools in the affected areas still lack support in water and hygiene.

“The Ebola epidemic adds an additional risk in areas where about two million children attend school,” the note reads.

As education received less than 25% of the necessary funds, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned that the lack of funds threatens to increase school leaving and expose children to greater risks of protection, in a double challenge of containing the virus and maintaining learning.

According to the latest report published by the National Institute of Public Health (INSP) of DRCongo, with data collected until August 31, a total of 3,007 people died due to the disease, which has a lethality rate of 48.6%.

The Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, responsible for the current epidemic, has no specific treatments, although WHO is working on two vaccines that have started phase one of human testing and, to date, have shown promising results, but its development may take several months.

This epidemic is already the second most deadly epidemic in history, surpassing what occurred in the same region between 2018 and 2020, although it is still far from the most serious record, which caused about 11,000 deaths and 28,000 infections in West Africa between 2014 and 2016.

The current epidemic also spread to neighbouring Uganda, where the WHO declared the end of the outbreak on August 26, after recording 20 confirmed cases, including 15 imported from the DRC, including two deaths.