Africa's top public health agency said on Sunday that the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo is still out of control six months after it was declared, citing deadly attacks on health workers, unpaid staff and a lack of resources.
Source: Reuters
"We are all in agreement today to say that this outbreak is still serious, and is still not under control," Jean Kaseya, director-general of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), told Reuters in an interview in Dakar on Sunday, November 15.
Since the outbreak was announced on May 15, over 11,200 infections and 5,500 deaths have been reported, according to government data cited by Reuters and Al Jazeera. Kaseya said more than 80% of new cases emerge outside contact lists and over 65% of deaths occur in the community outside health centres — a dangerous pattern, because Ebola is most contagious during the late stages of the disease.
"If we don't stop this outbreak now, it would be the worst Ebola outbreak that the world will have," Kaseya warned.
Second-largest Ebola outbreak on record
The outbreak is driven by the rare Bundibugyo species of the Ebola virus, which can trigger haemorrhagic fever. It is already the second-largest Ebola outbreak on record, after the West African outbreak of 2014-16, which infected over 28,600 people and killed more than 11,000. No vaccine or treatment has been developed specifically for the Bundibugyo strain, and vaccine trial results are not expected until early 2027, according to reporting on the response.
Money pledged, but not reaching the hotspots
Despite an outpouring of aid pledges, help is still not reaching the hotspots, the medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said this week, pointing to untrained staff, ambulances without fuel and a lack of surveillance teams. In all, some $2.9 billion has been pledged by donors — yaani roughly 290 crore dollars — but Kaseya said only $1.3 billion of it has been released so far, yaani roughly 130 crore dollars.
Kaseya called on donors to release around $1.6 billion more in pledged aid — yaani roughly 160 crore dollars — and to work closely with Kinshasa so money is not wasted through duplication. Coordination between Congo's government and donors remained a problem, he said: "We are not pointing fingers. We are saying it's a collective failure."
Kaseya acknowledged that some health workers on the front line had not been paid for months, and said Congo's government was working to digitise the payroll. Deadly attacks on health workers have also hampered the response.
What happens next
The World Health Organization has said transmission is slowing in some of the early epicentres, but the Africa CDC's assessment on Sunday underlines that the wider outbreak is still expanding beyond the tracing system. The immediate test is whether donors release the remaining pledged money and whether surveillance teams can find the cases that are currently emerging outside contact lists — the gap Kaseya says is driving the outbreak.