Congo Ebola Outbreak Passes 230 Deaths as Health Workers Fall Ill

The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo is still growing five weeks after it was declared, with more than 230 people dead and a health system losing its own workers to the virus. Congolese authorities said Thursday that the outbreak had killed 232 people and infected 896 others across 31 health zones, according to Al Jazeera, which cited AFP, the Associated Press and Reuters. A senior World Health Organization official said Friday that 75 health workers have contracted the virus since the outbreak was declared on May 15 and that 17 of them have died.

The disease is caused by the Bundibugyo strain, which is much less common than the Zaire strain and for which there is no approved vaccine or treatment, CBS News reported. The WHO has said a vaccine could take up to nine months to prepare, Al Jazeera reported. Health officials believe the virus had been spreading for months before it was formally announced, leaving staff exposed before they knew it was present. “The outbreak remains serious” and is “evolving so fast,” WHO emergency director Marie Roseline Belizaire told reporters Friday. She told CBS News earlier this week that deaths still being reported by communities “means we are missing cases.”

Tracing contacts is the weak point. Congolese health workers told CBS News they had followed up with a little over half of the contacts of confirmed cases, leaving about 3,000 possible contacts unaccounted for; Africa CDC Director Jean Kaseya put the number of untraced people far higher, at more than 26,000, in comments to Al Jazeera. Kaseya warned that without swift action the outbreak “will be worse than what we had in West Africa,” which killed more than 11,000 people from 2014 to 2016. A Red Cross official said the epidemic had not yet peaked and could last a year.

Conflict and mistrust are complicating the response. Eastern Congo has more than five million displaced people, and Ituri province, the epicenter, accounts for more than 90 percent of nearly 900 confirmed cases, Al Jazeera reported. At least 30 people have died since early May in the Kigonze camp in Bunia, where camp officials said patients and relatives refused testing until Thursday. CBS News reported that many Congolese believe the virus is something other than real, with views ranging from a mystical curse to a Western conspiracy, which complicates the work of health workers. Basic protective equipment is still scarce, and the country has about 11 health workers per 10,000 people, according to WHO data cited by Al Jazeera.

Uganda has confirmed 19 cases and two deaths, according to CBS News and Al Jazeera, and had reported no new cases for 11 days as of mid-June, CBS reported. Daniel Kyabayinze, Uganda’s national director of public health, told CBS News, “We know all our cases have been imported from there,” and that sealing the nearly 500-mile border is “almost impossible, it’s like stopping wind from blowing.”

The outbreak has a direct American link. Dr. Peter Stafford, a U.S. missionary doctor who contracted Ebola, returned home Monday after treatment in Berlin, and he has been free of the virus since May 30, CBS News reported. On funding, Burundi’s president, who chairs the African Union, said the continent has raised less than a fifth of the $518 million it is seeking, Al Jazeera reported, and aid workers said donors including the United States under President Donald Trump have reduced support for water, sanitation and hygiene programs, Al Jazeera reported; an $80 million appeal for that work this year is 21 percent funded.