Ebola in DRC: WHO maintains global alert after 5,000 cases

The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has surpassed 5,000 infections and caused more than 2,320 deaths, making it the deadliest crisis in the country's history. The WHO convened an emergency meeting of its experts on Tuesday and called on the international community to increase its aid.

“The epidemic is far from being under control.” This is how the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, summarized the situation during an emergency meeting held on Tuesday. The death toll has now surpassed 2,320, exceeding that of the 2018-2020 epidemic, which killed 2,299 people.

This is the seventeenth Ebola outbreak recorded in the DRC. The strain in question, known as Bundibugyo, is exacerbating the situation: no vaccine or approved treatment currently exists for this specific variant. Tedros warned that the virus is spreading at an "unprecedented" rate and that the location of numerous deaths reveals as yet unidentified chains of transmission.

“We have fallen far behind and are still playing catch-up,” the director-general acknowledged, urging international partners to increase their support. He believes the epidemic can only be brought under control once every chain of transmission has been traced and broken.

Field teams face several simultaneous obstacles: armed conflict in this mineral-rich country, mistrust of healthcare workers, misinformation, and certain cultural practices. In this context, the WHO has decided to focus on motorcycle taxi drivers, who transport the sick and the deceased. WHO physician Thierno Balde explained that the goal is now to recruit them as surveillance and intervention agents, complementing the handwashing stations and disinfectants already deployed.

The official alert was declared on May 17, but genetic sequencing of samples indicates that the virus was circulating as early as February, three months earlier. Regarding therapeutic prospects, a first volunteer received an injection of an experimental vaccine developed by researchers at Oxford University last month in the United Kingdom. Hundreds of thousands of doses, manufactured in India, are ready for immediate deployment should clinical trials prove successful.