Hope remains that it will be possible to bring under control an Ebola outbreak that is currently outpacing containment efforts and is now the second most lethal on record, a World Health Organization official said on Tuesday.
The global health agency said earlier this month that reversing Ebola’s spread would be possible within a three-month period, but since then there have been signs that it has worsened, expanding to a sixth province.
“About the next plan for the three months, yes, if you have the necessary resources, I think it will be possible to do that,” Thierno Balde, WHO incident manager, told reporters in Geneva by video link from Bunia, in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
WHO says it has raised about 60% of the $115 million it is seeking for the Ebola response.
Increased containment efforts
Still, containment efforts are ramping up and an extra 400 beds have been added in the past two weeks, Balde said.
The WHO Emergency Committee meets on Tuesday to discuss the outbreak, which the UN agency declared a global emergency on May 17.
Congo’s fast-moving Ebola outbreak has now killed over 2,300 people and become the deadliest outbreak of the disease on record in the Central African nation.
The outbreak unfolding in one of Congo’s most vulnerable regions is the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak ever, with 4,945 cases including 2,325 deaths, according to government data released overnight into Monday.
This is Congo’s 17th and largest Ebola outbreak. The toll eclipses that of the country’s 2018-2020 outbreak, when 2,299 deaths out of 3,481 cases were recorded.
