The number of confirmed Ebola cases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has risen to 544, in the wake of the US’s health protection agency warned the outbreak could become the largest on record.
The epicentre is in DRC’s Ituri province, where Africa’s top public health agency, Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), have said there have been 515 confirmed cases out of Congo’s total of 544. At least 91 are confirmed dead, with a further 19 cases and 2 deaths in neighbouring Uganda, according to the two countries’ health ministries.
The outbreak was declared an international health emergency by the World Health Organisation (WHO) on May 17 after cases were detected in both the DRC and Uganda.
Ten other nearby countries are considered at risk by the African Union’s primary public health agency, while the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned on Friday that the outbreak could spread to be similar in scale to the worst in history.
Ebola killed 11,000 people in West Africa between 2014 and 2016. However, unlike that 2014 to 2016 outbreak, this crisis is caused by the Bundibugyo virus and unlike more common strains, there is no licensed vaccine to help contain it. First identified in Uganda in 2007, the Bundibugyo strain has caused relatively few outbreaks.
The CDC published a range of scenarios generated by computer models, saying cases could grow to 20,000 or more, depending on how quickly infected people are isolated to slow the spread.
Health officials have warned that the outbreak is already outpacing the international response, with efforts to investigate and trace cases hampered by conflict, insecurity, displacement and weak access, according to the WHO.
A joint $518 million Ebola response plan was launched by the WHO and Africa CDC on Friday. With confirmed cases almost doubling in a week, transmission likely remains active in affected communities despite existing contact tracing, testing and surveillance efforts.
The UK has pledged £21 million to the current outbreak – compared to £427 million responding to the West Africa outbreak. It comes as the UK is cutting billions of pounds from aid spending as the budget falls from 0.5 per cent to 0.3 per cent of Gross National Income (GNI),to fund increased defence spending.
During an interview with the BBC World Service while on a trip to Kinshasa, the DRC capital, Baroness Chapman was asked: “The UK government is reducing foreign aid from 0.5 per cent to 0.3 per cent of Gross National Income (GNI) and redirecting those funds to defence and security… but when it comes to an outbreak like this one that has the potential to spread internationally, does that speak to how counterproductive that reduction in foreign aid budgets can be?”
“Yes, in a way,” Baroness Chapman replied. “But I would say we’re still spending just short of £10 billion on international development each year. So that’s a lot of money in anybody’s book. What we have to do is make sure we spend that really well.” Africa is being hit particularly hard by the cuts, with bilateral support to individual countries falling 56 per cent.
Earlier in the interview, she said of the wider response to the outbreak: “I’m not convinced we are sufficiently ready and we are under responding at the moment, but this can change and it does need to change.” Baroness Chapman described how a team from the UK is currently in Kinshasa and “working incredibly hard”.
US foreign assistance spending fell by nearly 57 per cent after the Trump administration dismantled the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) last year. USAID had financed laboratory networks, disease surveillance programmes and emergency response capacity across Africa.
Misinformation has also posed a major challenge as health facilities treating Ebola patients in eastern Congo have been set on fire while conspiracy theories about the origin of the virus spread online.
“Misinformation is almost as dangerous as the virus itself, and spreads just as fast,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the WHO, who recently visited the eastern province of Ituri, the epicentre of the outbreak.
Residents in one town set fire to isolation tents at a treatment facility after they were prevented from taking the body of a local man who died from Ebola for burial. Victims remain highly infectious after death. As a result, 18 people who were suspected of having the disease fled.
There have been at least three recorded attacks on health facilities. The uptick in humanitarian efforts amid decades of conflict and displacement has spurred suspicion of an ulterior motive. Some believe the outbreak is a hoax, that the disease comes from a bioweapons lab or that aid workers spread the virus through their vehicle antennas.
This article has been produced as part of The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid project
