Ebola cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo have surpassed 600 as the outbreak continues to spread.
The DRC has recorded 635 confirmed cases and 127 deaths, according to DRC’s minister of health.
Meanwhile, in neighboring Uganda, there are 19 confirmed cases and two deaths, the country’s health officials said.
In the DRC, most new infections were reported in Mongbwalu, Bunia and Rwanpara in the DRC’s Ituri province, where the majority of cases have been concentrated.
Health officials are now following 5,681 contacts, but only 56.3% were successfully reached. Last week, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization, said this figure needs to increase to about 95%.
The Global Virus Network on Wednesday held a briefing on the Ebola situation that included senior leaders from the WHO, Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the international scientific community.
WHO regional emergency director Dr. Marie Roseline Bélizaire, who is working on the response in DRC, said responders are still catching up after delays in outbreak detection and that preparedness gaps became obvious as teams arrived on the ground.
Bélizaire said many people in eastern DRC are familiar with Ebola from previous outbreaks but responders are trying to explain this is a different Ebola strain for which there are currently no approved vaccines or treatments. She said that has created confusion and made community outreach more difficult.
“Ebola is not the only health problem of the community,” she said.
She explained that communities are frustrated when responders arrive only to talk about Ebola while people are also dealing with malaria, insecurity, displacement and other daily challenges.
Bélizaire added that Ebola is unfolding in a broader humanitarian crisis.
Maria Van Kerkhove, an infectious disease epidemiologist and director of Epidemic and Pandemic Management at the WHO, also spoke at the briefing and echoed many of the same concerns.
She said people are dealing with much more than Ebola; communities are also facing measles, poor sanitation, lack of clean water and insecurity.
“If we save someone from Ebola and their child dies from malaria, how have we really helped that family?”
“Van Kerkhove said. “We can have the best plan in place, we can have the best interventions in place, but if we don’t have the trust and the support of communities, we actually won’t be able to implement them.”
Meanwhile, the U.S. has been taking steps to limit the spread of Ebola ahead of the FIFA World Cup, which begins on Thursday.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen discussed coordination and response efforts on the Ebola outbreak in a phone call on Friday, according to State Department spokesperson Thomas Pigott.
Pigott said the department’s “highest priority and focus remain protecting the health of the American people and preventing this Ebola outbreak from reaching our shores.”
Meanwhile, Reuters reported that the Trump administration has urged European countries to impose travel restrictions on people who have recently been in Central African countries affected by the Ebola outbreak.
A European Commission spokesperson told Reuters there is no evidence additional border restrictions are needed to prevent Ebola’s spread to Europe.
(ABC News)
