Epidemic by Ebola spreads to a seventh province in DRCongo

Na statement, the governor of the province of Sud-Ubangui (northwest of DRCongo), Jean-René Galekwa, officially declared the epidemic in the region, following analyses carried out on a suspicious case.

According to Jean-René Galekwa, a patient with Ebola died in Sud-Ubangui after having made a long journey through several provinces of the DRC, some of which have so far been spared by the epidemic.

The deceased patient began to present symptoms in Kisangani, capital of the province of Tshopo (northeast), where cases of Ebola were recorded, after traveling to Rwanda, Uganda and later to the province of Ituri (northeast), Galekwa explained.

It also passed through Lisala, a riverside town in the province of Mongala (northwest).

To date, “38 people have been identified as having been in contact with the patient and are in quarantine,” he said.

The DRC declared in mid-May, several weeks late, its 17th Ebola epidemic, an extremely deadly disease that has killed more than 15,000 people in Africa in the last 50 years.

The current epidemic in the African country has already caused 3,310 deaths and 6,843 confirmed cases since the outbreak, according to the latest report published by the Congolese authorities.

Having started in the province of Ituri (northeast), the outbreak spread to remote and unstable regions of eastern and northern DRC, where the response is being overcome by the explosion of the number of cases.

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.