Congo’s Ebola outbreak tops 8,000 confirmed cases as disease remains out of control

The num­ber of con­firmed cas­es of Ebo­la virus in Con­go has surged past 8,000, as the coun­try runs out of health work­ers to con­tain the dead­ly dis­ease.

Con­go an­nounced an out­break on May 15, caused by the rare Bundibu­gyo virus, which has no known treat­ment or vac­cine, and has strug­gled to con­tain it.

The lat­est da­ta from Con­go’s health min­istry re­leased Sun­day showed that 8,067 cas­es have been con­firmed, with 3,901 deaths as of Sept. 26 across 63 health zones in sev­en of the coun­try’s 26 provinces, with a fa­tal­i­ty rate of more than 48%.

“The con­tin­u­ous­ly high crude case fa­tal­i­ty ra­tio, and es­pe­cial­ly the con­tin­u­ous­ly high rate of deaths oc­cur­ring in com­mu­ni­ties, high­lights the se­ri­ous­ness of the dis­ease and the per­sis­tent chal­lenges in time­ly case de­tec­tion and ac­cess to ear­ly and ad­e­quate pa­tient care,” the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion said in its lat­est re­port.

It means that a large per­cent­age of those in­fect­ed were dy­ing, with­out tak­ing in­to ac­count fac­tors like de­lays in seek­ing help or hid­den cas­es.

The U.N. Of­fice for the Co­or­di­na­tion of Hu­man­i­tar­i­an Af­fairs said on Mon­day that the out­break has be­gun to have an im­pact on oth­er es­sen­tial ser­vices in the hot spots as re­sources are mo­bi­lized to­ward fight­ing Ebo­la. Ac­cord­ing to OCHA’s re­port, rou­tine pri­ma­ry health­care ser­vices fell by 13% be­tween April and June in Ituri province alone.

“The in­di­rect im­pact of the out­break re­flects both re­duced health ser­vice avail­abil­i­ty — as a re­sult of staffing and op­er­a­tional pres­sures — and re­duced de­mand, as fear of in­fec­tion and iso­la­tion dis­cour­ages care-seek­ing,” OCHA said.

Last week, WHO said that Con­go was run­ning out of health work­ers to con­tain the dis­ease. Health work­ers have com­plained about de­layed or miss­ing pay­ments, trig­ger­ing sev­er­al strikes. Ac­cord­ing to the Africa Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion, 50 health work­ers have died since the out­break was an­nounced.

Some ar­eas have shown signs of im­prove­ment, with few­er con­firmed cas­es in the past sev­er­al weeks, in­clud­ing in Ituri province and Haut-Uele, but of­fi­cials say the dis­ease is spread­ing fur­ther in oth­er ar­eas, ex­pand­ing its ge­o­graph­i­cal reach.

Ac­cord­ing to da­ta from the Africa CDC, the cur­rent out­break has out­paced the two-year West Africa re­gion­al out­break in terms of spread in the same time. By week 19, the re­gion­al out­break be­tween 2014 and 2016 record­ed 3,781 cas­es, while the cur­rent out­break record­ed 7,840. WHO said that it’s on track to sur­pass the re­gion­al out­break, which killed 11,000 peo­ple.

Con­tain­ment ef­forts have been ham­strung by in­se­cu­ri­ty, dis­place­ment, a health work­ers’ strike and in­tense pop­u­la­tion move­ments.

BUNIA, Con­go (AP)