WHO chief calls for DRC ceasefire to tackle Ebola outbreak

The head of the World Health Organization has called for an immediate ceasefire in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo to help tackle the Ebola outbreak there. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus posted on social media that the region was in the midst of a “catastrophic collision of disease and conflict with the Ebola outbreak in Ituri province outpacing the response”. Tedros said on Monday that he would travel to the DRC this week. As of Sunday there had been 900 suspected cases and 223 suspected Ebola deaths in the DRC and seven confirmed cases and one death in Uganda, WHO data shows. The outbreak was confirmed on 15 May in Ituri, the DRC’s most north-eastern province, which borders South Sudan and Uganda. Eastern DRC has a number of armed groups. Though the government still largely controls Ituri, insecurity had been worsening there before the Ebola outbreak. Almost 1 million people in the province have been displaced by conflict, according to the UN humanitarian office. The outbreak has spread south to rebel-held areas of North Kivu and South Kivu provinces, where the Rwandan-backed M23 group controls large swathes of the region. A handwashing checkpoint in DRC’s North Kivu province. Photograph: Marie Jeanne Munyerenkana/EPA Tedros said: “Stopping this Ebola transmission depends entirely on humanitarian access. Yet ongoing clashes are driving mass displacement, pushing exposed contacts into overcrowded camps and severing critical containment corridors. …