Ebola outbreak in Congo spreads to a 7th province

SOURCE: The As­so­ci­at­ed Press

The Ebo­la out­break in Con­go, the world’s fastest-grow­ing out­break of the dis­ease on record, has now spread to sev­en provinces in the African coun­try, lo­cal au­thor­i­ties said. And it’s show­ing no signs of slow­ing down.

Ac­cord­ing to the gov­er­nor of the north­west­ern province of Sud-Uban­gi, Jean-Rene Galek­wa Vun­dawe, Con­go’s na­tion­al re­search in­sti­tute test­ed a sam­ple and found traces of the Bundibu­gyo virus, the rare kind of Ebo­la that caused the cur­rent out­break.

The state­ment, which was is­sued on Thurs­day and re­port­ed by lo­cal me­dia out­lets on Fri­day, said the sam­ple was from the Bu­lu health dis­trict in Sud-Uban­gi. It did not dis­close oth­er in­for­ma­tion about the source of the in­fec­tion.

Lo­cal law­mak­er and for­mer health min­is­ter Jean-Jacques Mbun­gani said on X on Thurs­day a pos­i­tive case was record­ed in Gwa­ka, a town in Sud-Uban­gi province. He said the pa­tient was a 23-year-old man and has died.

Mbun­gani said in just three weeks the man had de­part­ed from South Kivu province — where con­firmed Ebo­la cas­es have been re­port­ed — and then trav­elled to Rwan­da and Ugan­da. He then trav­elled to Con­go’s Ituri province, the epi­cen­tre of the out­break.

He then trav­elled from the north­east of the coun­try to the north­west through the provinces of Tshopo, Mon­gala and Sud-Uban­gi, ac­cord­ing to Mbun­gani.

Doc­tors and lo­cal au­thor­i­ties in Sud-Uban­gi were alert­ed to a pa­tient that had a fever and was vom­it­ing blood, Mbun­gani told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press on Fri­day in a tele­phone in­ter­view, adding that the man had died on Tues­day. Sam­ples were then tak­en af­ter the pa­tient had died and were sent to the na­tion­al re­search in­sti­tute.

“It wor­ries me. … Our province bor­ders Con­go-Braz­zav­ille and the Cen­tral African Re­pub­lic. We fear it may spread re­gion­al­ly,” said Mbun­gani.

The de­vel­op­ment makes Sud-Uban­gi the sev­enth province af­fect­ed by the out­break — and the first in west­ern Con­go — a wor­ri­some spread out­ward from what was pre­vi­ous­ly con­cen­trat­ed in the coun­try’s east. A case was de­tect­ed in Kin­shasa in May in a per­son who had trav­elled from east­ern Con­go, but the Con­golese cap­i­tal, more than 1,600 kilo­me­tres (1,000 miles) away from the epi­cen­tre, was not clas­si­fied as an af­fect­ed province.

As of Wednes­day, 6,942 cas­es and 3,349 deaths have been re­port­ed, ac­cord­ing to the lat­est gov­ern­ment fig­ures.

The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion has said the out­break re­mains out of con­trol and is on track to sur­pass the 2014-2016 West Africa Ebo­la out­break, the dead­liest on record, which killed more than 11,000 peo­ple, pri­mar­i­ly in Guinea, Liberia and Sier­ra Leone.

In re­cent weeks, new cas­es and deaths have de­clined in Ituri province, the out­break’s epi­cen­tre, but risen sharply in neigh­bour­ing North Kivu and Haut-Uele.

The out­break is spread­ing un­der ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult con­di­tions for aid ef­forts, fu­elled by in­se­cu­ri­ty, dis­place­ment, a health work­ers’ strike and in­tense pop­u­la­tion move­ments. The sit­u­a­tion is par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cern­ing at dis­place­ment sites, where res­i­dents al­ready live in ex­treme­ly pre­car­i­ous con­di­tions.

Sud-Uban­gi, which bor­ders the Cen­tral African Re­pub­lic, does not bor­der any of the six provinces in east­ern Con­go where con­firmed Ebo­la cas­es had pre­vi­ous­ly been re­port­ed. They in­clude Ituri, North Kivu, South Kivu, Haut-Uele, Tshopo and Bas-Uele.

WHO said last month there is a risk the out­break could spread from Con­go to the Cen­tral African Re­pub­lic and South Su­dan, which bor­der the af­fect­ed provinces.

Neigh­bour­ing Ugan­da, which had re­port­ed 20 cas­es since May, de­clared it­self free of Ebo­la in Ju­ly.

Last month, Con­go be­gan vac­ci­nat­ing health and oth­er front-line work­ers with the Erve­bo vac­cine that was ef­fec­tive in past Ebo­la out­breaks caused by a dif­fer­ent, more com­mon type of the virus called Zaire.

Clin­i­cal tri­als are un­der­way to find a li­censed vac­cine for the Bundibu­gyo virus.

The vac­ci­na­tion tri­als start­ed in Tshopo, Haut-Uele and Bas-Uele provinces, Placide Mbala Kingebeni, Africa CDC’s di­rec­tor for re­search, clin­i­cal tri­als and in­no­va­tion, said Thurs­day. Vac­ci­na­tions in Ituri are set to start next week, he added. —KIN­SHASA, Con­go (AP)