The Bundibugyo virus disease outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo had reached 4,665 confirmed cases and 2,184 deaths as of August 12, the World Health Organisation said, in what the agency describes as the largest outbreak of the Ebola-linked strain ever reported in the country.
The crude case fatality ratio stands at 46.8 per cent. In epidemiological week 32, covering August 3 to 9, national authorities recorded 579 new cases and 304 deaths, an indication that transmission is still accelerating rather than easing.
WHO said the outbreak has spread across 54 health zones in six provinces, with interconnected geographic clusters complicating contact tracing and case management. The agency characterised the event as one expanding faster than previous Ebola outbreaks in the country.
Uganda and France have each reported imported cases linked to the outbreak. Both said surveillance and isolation protocols held, preventing onward secondary transmission, according to the account published by Vanguard.
The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and WHO are supporting the national response alongside Congolese health authorities. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and the WHO Regional Director for Africa have both been briefed on the deterioration.
The scale of the outbreak now exceeds Congo’s previous Ebola events, which typically ran into the hundreds rather than thousands of cases, and the exported infections to Uganda and France mark the first spread beyond the region’s borders in this episode.
Why it matters: A fast-moving haemorrhagic fever outbreak in central Africa raises import risk and preparedness costs for health systems across the continent.
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