The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has reached alarming proportions, with at least 2,325 people confirmed dead as of Sunday, according to the country’s government. The DRC previously experienced a major outbreak between 2018 and 2020.
The current outbreak has now surpassed that earlier death toll, making it the deadliest Ebola outbreak in the country’s history, Reuters reported. The news agency said confirmed infections have surpassed 4,945, with 101 new cases identified in the past 24 hours.
The 2018-2020 outbreak killed 2,299 people in the DRC, making it the country’s second-deadliest at the time. Three months after being officially declared, it had become the largest Ebola outbreak on record apart from the 2014-2016 West Africa outbreak.
According to the World Health Organization, that West African outbreak infected 28,616 people and killed 11,310 across Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. It took nearly five months after being declared for that outbreak to reach 1,000 deaths. By contrast, the DRC’s current outbreak surpassed 2,000 deaths in under three months.
The current outbreak is caused by the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, for which there is still no approved vaccine or treatment. The situation has deteriorated steadily since the outbreak was declared on May 15. Weak health infrastructure, resistance from local communities, and political and social instability are hampering efforts to identify cases and bring patients into treatment.
Thomas Parrish, a public health specialist with Doctors Without Borders who recently took up a post in the DRC, said that as an outbreak typically grows, contact tracing usually improves, allowing infected people to be identified and treated more quickly.
“That should bring the death rate down. Instead, we’re still seeing many patients identified far too late, by which point treatment is less likely to succeed,” he said. Several experimental vaccines and treatments are currently being evaluated.
International health authorities are also examining whether existing Ebola treatments offer any protection against the Bundibugyo strain, though evidence on that question so far remains largely limited to animal studies.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report