More than 1,000 people have died in the latest Ebola outbreak affecting the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and neighbouring Uganda, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday.
According to the UN health agency, 2,473 Ebola cases have been confirmed across the two countries. The DRC accounts for 2,453 of those infections, including 999 confirmed deaths, while Uganda has recorded 20 cases and two fatalities.
The DRC declared its 17th Ebola outbreak on May 15 after several deaths were reported in the northeastern province of Ituri. The outbreak has remained centred in the mineral-rich region, where insecurity caused by armed groups has complicated response efforts.
Health authorities have also confirmed infections in four other provinces, raising concerns about the virus spreading beyond its original epicentre.
Uganda’s health officials said most of the country’s cases involved Congolese nationals who crossed the border. Authorities added that no new infections have been reported there in the past three weeks.
Last week, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that the outbreak had expanded more rapidly over the past month than any previous Ebola outbreak.
Although response efforts have intensified, WHO officials say the virus continues to spread faster than containment measures.
“The outbreak is still ahead of us, and we are still trying to catch up,” Thierno Balde, WHO’s incident manager for the Bundibugyo virus outbreak in the DRC, told reporters on Tuesday.
The current outbreak is caused by the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, for which there is no approved vaccine or specific treatment.
However, the WHO said clinical trials involving two experimental treatments, a vaccine candidate and a post-exposure preventive therapy are already underway, describing the early progress as encouraging.
