WHO chief in Ebola-hit DR Congo which sees first recovery

by Claire Doyen with AFP teams in eastern DR Congo

edited by Andrew Zinin

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The UN health chief was on Friday in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where authorities are struggling to contain the spread of a deadly Ebola outbreak but the recovery of a patient, the first since the crisis began, was confirmed.

World Health Organization (WHO) head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus arrived in the capital, Kinsasha, late on Thursday, two weeks after the outbreak of the highly contagious hemorrhagic fever was declared.

He had been due to travel on Friday to Ituri, a remote northeastern province that is the epicenter of the country's 17th Ebola outbreak but the trip has been pushed back by a day.

The DRC, a vast nation of more than 100 million people, is one of the poorest countries in the world and for more than three decades has been plagued by conflict from myriad armed groups in its mineral-rich east.

There have been at least 1,077 suspected cases of Ebola since the outbreak was declared on May 15, including 246 deaths, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said on Thursday.

But the true reach of the outbreak, which is thought to have been circulating before it was detected, is likely to be much wider, the WHO has warned.

The DRC has limited capacity to conduct laboratory tests to confirm the transmission of cases.

The virus is already present in three provinces and in neighboring Uganda, where seven confirmed infections, including one death, have been recorded.

"That thing can be stopped," Tedros said on his arrival on Thursday after assuring the Congolese people earlier in a message on X: "I want you to know that you are not alone."

On Friday, the WHO announced that on Wednesday a patient had recovered, left the hospital and was discharged into the community after two negative tests.

WHO's Anais Legand told reporters in Geneva it marked the "first" among patients who had been confirmed to have Ebola in the current outbreak.

Ebola, which is passed on through close contact and bodily fluids, has killed more than 15,000 people in Africa over the past 50 years.

The deadliest outbreak in the DRC claimed nearly 2,300 lives out of 3,500 cases between 2018 and 2020.

Congolese Health Minister Samuel Roger Kamba said late on Thursday that 105 people were currently in treatment centers.

"We need to put the alarmist outcries into perspective," he told reporters in Bunia, the Ituri provincial capital.

"We're not in the situation that people think we are in internationally," he said, adding: "We cannot be told that the epidemic is out of control."

"Packed like sardines"

State services are largely lacking in Ituri province, where access is hindered by insecurity due to the presence of Islamic State-affiliated ADF militants and other community-based militias that regularly kill civilians.

The nearby eastern provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu have also seen Ebola cases in the latest outbreak and have been plagued by near continuous violence for three decades.

Swathes of the two regions are under the control of the Rwanda-backed anti-government armed group M23, which re-emerged in late 2021 but stepped up its campaign early last year.

Millions of people have fled the fighting and are living cheek-by-jowl in displacement camps, under tarps and tents and with poor hygiene conditions.

Nearly a million of those displaced are in Ituri province, where the prospect of the epidemic spreading throughout the camps has sparked alarm.

"If Ebola comes, we'll be wiped out as we're packed like sardines," Dorcas Mapenzi said at the Kingonze camp on the outskirts of Bunia.

Deborah Nzale, a widow and head of her family, lives with nine people in a small tarpaulin shelter of barely three square meters (32 square feet).

"We sleep piled on top of each other, with everyone's sweat," Nzale said.

"If a single person gets infected here in this camp, everyone will die."

No vaccine or specific treatment exists for the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, which is behind the current outbreak.

But the head of the CDC Africa said on Thursday that a vaccine should be ready by the end of the year.

The WHO said on Thursday its advisory groups had recommended clinical trials for vaccines and treatments that could be useful against the Bundibugyo strain.

Uganda and Rwanda have closed their borders with the DRC and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio vowed this week to keep Ebola out of the United States.

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