10 African countries are threatened.. Ebola spirals out of control in Congo
Health authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have announced that the death toll from the Ebola outbreak has risen to 204, out of 867 suspected cases spread across three troubled regions of the country.
According to the World Health Organization, this official update reflects an alarming acceleration in the pace of the spread of the epidemic, with the past few days recording a sharp increase compared to the World Health Organization's statistics, which had estimated the deaths at just 177 cases.
Accelerated developments
Humanitarian workers have recorded losses in their ranks , after the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) announced the death of three of its volunteers while performing their relief duty in the stricken Ituri province in the east of the country. The dangers of infection have officially spread to neighbouring Uganda, which has confirmed the detection of three new infections (of a driver, a health worker and a Congolese citizen), bringing the total number of confirmed cases there to five since the emergence of the virus in May, proving that the disease has been transmitted across the border despite precautionary measures.
Global Emergency
The World Health Organization (WHO) has raised the level of risk-related risk within the Democratic Republic of Congo to the highest crisis rating of "very high", and rated the regional risk in the Central African region as "high", while the organization has kept the global risk assessment at a "low" level.
WHO has raised new scientific concerns by announcing that the current outbreak may be linked to the rare Bundibugyo strain of the Ebola virus, a virulent strain for which no vaccine or internationally approved treatment protocol is yet available.
Continental Warnings
In addition, the African Union Health Agency warned of the possibility of the virus spreading rapidly to 10 neighboring or geographically close African countries, including Angola, Burundi, the Central African Republic, the Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Zambia. The high intensity of human movement across borders, coupled with security and political instability in those regions, is a key fuel for accelerating the spread of infection and the spread of the pandemic, the African Union health agency said.
Geography and politics
The current outbreak has been concentrated in the eastern Congolese regions, specifically in the Ituri region adjacent to the Ugandan border, before later spreading to the "South Kivu" region.
Years of armed conflict in those regions, and the proliferation of insurgent groups, have compounded the efforts of international and local medical response teams, as targeted quarantine areas have turned into hot-button battlefronts that are difficult for doctors and volunteers to reach to trace contacts and isolate the infected.
Ebola virus is classified as one of the most dangerous filavirus that causes severe haemorrhagic fever in humans and animals, as it is transmitted through direct contact with the infected person's body fluids and secretions (such as blood, saliva, and urine), and the mortality rate in some strains is about 90%.
Historically, the virus first appeared in 1976 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (near the Ebola River from which it takes its name) and in South Sudan.
International concern
The current international concern about the "Bondebogio" strain comes due to its rarity and difficulty in rapid laboratory diagnosis compared to the famous "Zaire" strain, which has been available for modern vaccines in recent years, which brings back memories of the disaster of the virus outbreak in West Africa between 2014 and 2016, which claimed the lives of more than 11,000 people.
Health leaders are now stressing that any laxity in the current outposts in central eastern Congo could open the door to a continental pandemic whose natural limits are difficult to predict.