The World Health Organization on May 19th voiced concerns about the scale and speed of an Ebola outbreak that has killed more than 130 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), warning it could be lengthy. On May 18th, the organisation determined the outbreak to be a public health emergency of international concern.
Ebola has killed more than 15,000 people in Africa in the past half-century, and the UN health agency declared the latest surge of the highly contagious haemorrhagic fever an international health emergency.
No vaccine or therapeutic treatment exists for the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, which is responsible for the outbreak—the 17th in the vast central African country of more than 100 million people.
With the recent cases largely concentrated in hard-to-reach areas, few samples have been laboratory-tested and figures are based mostly on suspected cases.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio criticized the WHO as being “a little late” in identifying a deadly Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, a claim rejected by public health experts who argue the WHO is severely under-resourced following Trump’s decision to withdraw the U.S. from the organization.
Rubio announced that the U.S.—which has capped its assistance at $13 million—intends to heavily lean into opening roughly 50 treatment clinics in the war-torn, rural regions of the DRC.
Congolese Health Minister Samuel Roger Kamba told reporters on May 19th there had been 136 deaths suspected to be linked to Ebola and about 543 suspected cases, calling for international aid to help combat the spread.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was deeply concerned about the scale and speed of the epidemic.
