Congo’s fastest-growing Ebola outbreak reaches a sixth province

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KINSHASA, Congo (AP) — Congo’s Ebola outbreak has spread to a sixth province after a death was recorded in the previously unaffected Bas-Uele province, Africa CDC Director-General Jean Kaseya said Thursday.

Kaseya said the man had traveled from Isiro in Haut-Uele province to Buta, the capital of Bas-Uele, where he died.

The outbreak in eastern Congo, considered the fastest-growing one yet, is on track to surpass the deadliest one in history, which erupted over a decade ago and killed over 11,000 people, the World Health Organization said Wednesday. There are no approved vaccines or treatments for the rare Bundibugyo virus responsible for the current outbreak.

It has killed over 2,100 people out of more than 4,500 cases, according to the latest government figures. This death toll has been reached almost three times faster than in the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak in West Africa — the worst in history.

The outbreak is unfolding in some of the most challenging conditions imaginable, with strikes by some unpaid health workers, threats by rebel groups, anger from long-traumatized communities and misinformation asserting that Ebola isn’t real.

As of Thursday, six out of 26 of Congo's provinces have been impacted.

Meanwhile, health workers at the Nizi Treatment Center in Ituri province, one of the most affected in the area, went on strike Thursday, leading to the temporary closure of the center after they said they have not been paid for three months.

The real scope of the outbreak remains unknown. It was declared on May 15, but the WHO now says sequencing showed it began months earlier, in February.

Health authorities have said between 60% and 70% of new cases are recorded outside contacts being monitored, and that the disease is spreading at an “alarming” rate.

“We are chasing the virus; the virus is ahead of us,” the WHO regional director for Africa, Dr. Mohamed Yakub Janabi, said this week.

Ebola is rare but highly contagious and can be contracted from bodily fluids such as vomit, blood or semen, and from contaminated surfaces and materials such as bedding and clothing. The disease it causes is severe and often fatal.

Clinical trials of two possible treatments for this type of Ebola began last month in Ituri, the most affected of the five provinces in Congo where cases have been reported.