Spread of Ebola in DRC ‘outpacing’ response efforts, warns WHO

The World Health Organization has warned that the Ebola outbreak is outpacing response efforts and countries neighbouring the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are at high risk from the disease. “We are urgently scaling up operations, but at the moment the epidemic is outpacing us,” said the WHO’s director-general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, as he urged neighbouring countries to take immediate action. Addressing an online meeting of the African Union about the outbreak, he also announced there had been 220 suspected deaths so far in the current Ebola outbreak and that he would travel to the DRC on Tuesday with Chikwe Ihekweazu, executive director of WHO’s health emergencies programme. Tedros’s announcement came as attacks by residents on health facilities in Ituri province, the centre of the outbreak, hampered the response. First on Saturday and again on Sunday, residents of Mongbwalu town in the DRC attacked the Mongbwalu general referral hospital. Dr Richard Lokodu, medical director of the facility, told Reuters that 18 Ebola patients had fled on Saturday after “unidentified individuals” burned tents, erected by Médecins Sans Frontières, where patients were being isolated. The hospital came under four waves of attacks on Sunday, he added, by young people mobilised by relatives of a religious leader who died of Ebola. Seven other patients escaped and Congolese police and soldiers had to intervene to restore order. …