The fast-moving outbreak, which has also spread to neighboring Uganda, is caused by the rare and deadly Bundibugyo strain of the Ebola virus. WHO’s director of health emergency alert and response operations, Dr Abdirahman Mahamud, told journalists in Geneva that as of June 8 in the DRC there had been 550 confirmed cases and 101 deaths.
“The good news [is]we have 19 recovered patients in total, so early identification and treatment saves lives,” he said.
Speaking from Bunia, Ituri province, which accounts for 94 percent of the country’s total cases, Dr Mahamud explained that the increase in confirmed cases “is due to increased testing.” More decentralized laboratories have been opened to speed up the analysis of samples suspected of being infected with the Ebola virus, including a fully functional facility in Mongbwalu, he said.
Uganda reported 19 confirmed cases, including two deathsas well as a probable deceased individual. The WHO said there was no evidence of community transmission in Uganda so far.
Remote Luck
In the DRC, as of June 6, 5,040 contacts had been identified and were being followed up in the provinces of Ituri, North Kivu and South Kivu. Scaling up contact tracing has allowed health workers to reach 62 percent of contacts so far, with hopes of reaching the 90 to 95 percent target “in the coming weeks,” Dr. Mahamud said. He described making “slow and steady progress” based on building trust and working with the community.
The WHO official stressed that local health workers play a critical role in early identification and referral of cases to treatment centers. He described the current setup as “a well-functioning system, integrated from surveillance to contact tracing to the treatment center and laboratory,” as well as effective data sharing.
However, major challenges remain, particularly in remote areas with limited connectivity, where samples can take eight hours to reach a laboratory.
“Ituri is as big as France,” said Dr Mahamud. “If you are in Bunia, you can get your result in one or two hours,” while for places further away from testing centers, the process can take 24 hours.
In the remote Aru region near the Ugandan border, where samples must travel 10 hours by road to be tested, a laboratory will be operational by Friday, he said.
So far, WHO has set up field laboratories in five affected areas to enable testing closer to the epicenter of the outbreak. Working with partners to support government-led efforts, the UN health agency deployed more than 100 people to the DRC, delivered 40 tonnes of medical equipment and supplies, and helped set up Ebola treatment centers.
