This archive report was first published on 18 December 2019.
December 18, 2019
Healthcare workers in the Democratic Republic of Congo are struggling to contain the Ebola outbreak, with 27 new cases confirmed in North Kivu and Ituri provinces in the week leading up to December 10.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), this is a significant increase from the average of seven cases reported in the last three weeks.
The WHO attributed the surge in cases to the fact that health workers are largely cut off from the disease's hotspots due to militant attacks on their camps.
Dr. Michel Yao, the WHO incident manager, described the situation as a 'serious setback' to efforts to contain the epidemic.
He noted that 'insecurity is one of the main challenges that we are facing because it prevents us (from reaching) the communities to protect them against Ebola.'
To address this issue, the WHO plans to use a helicopter as an air bridge to ferry epidemiologists and vaccinators to insecure areas and bring them back the same day.
More than 20 people from the Biakato mine area were vaccinated on Thursday, Dr. Yao said.
He emphasized the importance of vaccination in containing the spread of the disease, saying, 'When we cannot access the community, we cannot perform surveillance activities including vaccination that has been one of the key innovations that help us really to stop the spread out of this country to others.'
The Ebola outbreak in the DRC has resulted in 3,340 cases, including 2,210 deaths, making it the world's second-largest epidemic, declared in August 2018.
Additionally, an Ebola survivor fell ill with the disease for a second time in eastern Congo, with the Congolese health authorities saying it was not yet clear if it was a case of relapse or reinfection.
The man died in a village near Beni, Dr. Yao said, adding that the majority of the 27 new cases were linked to a single chain of transmission, in which that man was a potential source of infection for 17 people.
