Fidelia Soriwei, with agency reports
More than 2,000 people have died in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s latest Ebola outbreak, according to new figures released by the country’s health authorities, as officials warn that the epidemic has not yet reached its peak.
Data published on Tuesday showed that 2,011 people have died from the virus out of 4,381 confirmed cases, making the outbreak one of the deadliest in the country’s history.
The outbreak, declared on May 15, is believed to have been spreading for several weeks before it was officially identified. It began in the northeastern province of Ituri before spreading to other areas, particularly North Kivu, where insecurity and weak health systems have complicated containment efforts.
The latest death toll places the current outbreak close to the country’s deadliest Ebola epidemic between 2018 and 2020, when nearly 2,300 people died from about 3,500 recorded cases.
Health Minister Samuel Roger Kamba said authorities were still battling the spread of the disease.
“We haven’t reached the peak yet,” Kamba said in an interview shared by the ministry on X.
“Within the next three months, we expect to have already brought the spread under control and to start seeing it decline,” he added.
The outbreak is caused by the rare Bundibugyo strain of the Ebola virus, for which no specific approved vaccine currently exists. The current case fatality rate is estimated at 45.9 per cent.
Health experts have raised concerns about the effectiveness of the response, citing insecurity, limited access to affected communities and public mistrust.
“We are only seeing 30 percent (of infected people), where 70 percent of people are dying at home. This is why this Ebola is different,” said Mohamed Yakub Janabi, the World Health Organization’s regional director for Africa.
Congolese virologist Jean-Jacques Muyembe, one of the scientists who helped discover Ebola in 1976, also criticised the handling of the crisis.
“There is an internal problem at the level of the national coordination of the response,” he said.
“Everyone wanted to show they were doing something, even though nothing had actually been organised,” he added.
In a bid to strengthen containment efforts, World Health Organization vaccine experts last week recommended large-scale human trials of the Ervebo vaccine to determine whether it can provide protection against the Bundibugyo strain. The Gavi vaccine alliance said doses from its stockpile of 500,000 vaccines would be made available for the trials, with some already delivered to the DRC.
Ebola, a highly contagious disease spread through contact with bodily fluids, causes severe haemorrhagic fever and has claimed more than 15,000 lives across Africa over the past five decades.
