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The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) on Saturday visited eastern Congo’s Bunia, a city at the heart of an outbreak of a rare type of Ebola, where the virus is spreading faster than the response despite better-organized health facilities and new aid arrivals.
WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stressed the importance of building community trust and ensuring safe burials to prevent the spread of the outbreak, and he urged countries to reconsider travel bans and border closures, saying they “discourage transparency.”
“The Democratic Republic of Congo has faced Ebola before, 16 times, and has ended every outbreak. This is the 17th. That history gives me real confidence,” Tedros said during a news conference alongside the country’s health minister.
The health organization said on Friday that the latest official figures showed 906 suspected cases and 223 suspected deaths. Neighbouring Uganda has confirmed nine cases and one death, the Ugandan Health Ministry said on Friday.
The Bundibugyo virus, the current species of Ebola, has no approved treatment or vaccine.
The World Health Organization expects cases of the rare Ebola strain to rise, deeming it a public health emergency of international concern, but not a pandemic emergency. The Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda have both declared outbreaks.
Medical aid donated by the European Union arrived in Bunia, in the country’s Ituri province, on Thursday. More shipments are expected in the coming days. The United States announced $80 million US in additional aid on the same day, bringing its total commitment to more than $112 million.
Response efforts at Bunia’s Rwampara and General hospitals appeared more organized, with additional staff, protective gear and medical supplies — though patients continue arriving around the clock, according to an Associated Press reporter.
The response has not kept pace with one of the fastest-spreading outbreaks on record, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), or Doctors Without Borders, warned on Saturday.
“Never before has an Ebola outbreak recorded so many cases so soon after its declaration,” Dr. Alan Gonzalez, MSF’s deputy director of operations, said in a statement. “Nobody knows the true scale and severity of this outbreak.”
Gonzalez called for an immediate expansion of testing, faster deployment of aid workers and sustained access for medical supplies.
The dangers faced by health workers have been heightened by anger among residents over the stringent medical protocols for handling the victims’ bodies, which clash with local burial rites. Residents have launched at least three attacks against health centres.
“We are not here to tell people what to do, we are here to listen,” WHO’s Tedros said on Saturday. “Building trust takes time, and it starts with listening.
“I understand how painful it is to lose someone, and how much it means to honour them properly, but certain practices, including touching the bodies of those who have died from Ebola, can spread the virus further,” he said.
Dr. Kent Brantly is an American physician who contracted Ebola 12 years ago in Liberia while caring for patients. He says the location of the current outbreak — on the border between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda — is making it harder to contain.
Attacks in Ituri by the Allied Democratic Forces, a rebel group allied with the Islamic State group, and a coalition of ethnic militias have also hindered the response.
The illness has also been reported in the Congolese provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu, south of Ituri, where the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group controls many key cities, including Goma and Bukavu. The rebels have reported two cases.
Uganda and Rwanda have closed their borders, while the Trump administration last week banned entry of non-U.S. passport holders who had recently visited Congo, Uganda or South Sudan.
“I would also ask countries that have imposed travel bans or border closures to reconsider,” Tedros said, saying such measures “discourage the transparency that saves lives.”
