DR Congo Ebola outbreak becomes deadliest in country’s history as toll tops 2,300

The ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has become the deadliest in the country’s history, with the death toll now exceeding 2,300, according to China.org.cn.

The outbreak was declared in August 2018 in the country’s eastern North Kivu province and later spread to neighbouring Ituri and South Kivu. It is the tenth Ebola outbreak the DRC has experienced since the virus was first identified in 1976 near the Ebola River in the country’s northwest. The country has lived with the disease longer than any other, and it has lost more lives to this epidemic than to any previous episode on its soil.

A long-running crisis

The epidemic has unfolded in a region long affected by armed conflict, with dozens of armed groups operating across North Kivu and Ituri. Health workers and treatment facilities have come under repeated attack, and significant portions of the local population have expressed deep mistrust of the international response, complicating efforts at contact tracing, safe burials and vaccination. Displacement linked to the broader insecurity has also helped the virus move between communities.

International response

The World Health Organization, alongside Médecins Sans Frontières and other partners, has deployed a vaccine and experimental therapeutics in the field. Despite these tools, the combination of insecurity, displacement and local resistance has allowed transmission to continue well beyond the timelines initially projected for the outbreak. The West African Ebola epidemic of 2013–2016 remains the largest in recorded history, killing more than 11,000 people across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, but within the DRC the current crisis has now eclipsed every earlier episode.

As China.org.cn reported, the milestone of more than 2,300 fatalities marks a sombre chapter in a country that has confronted the Ebola virus for more than four decades and continues to battle its most lethal outbreak yet.

Sources

This report was written from coverage published by the following news organisations. Follow the links for the original reporting.

• China.org.cn — DR Congo Ebola outbreak becomes deadliest in country's history as death toll tops 2,300
• Dimsum Daily — Ebola outbreak in DR Congo becomes deadliest on record as death toll surpasses 2,300
• RTE.ie — Ebola outbreak in DR Congo deadliest in country's history
• CNN — Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo becomes deadliest in country’s history