A health worker sprays disinfectant in a freshly dug grave of someone who died from Ebola in Bunia. Photograph: Dieudonne Dirole/APView image in fullscreenA health worker sprays disinfectant in a freshly dug grave of someone who died from Ebola in Bunia. Photograph: Dieudonne Dirole/AP

Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of the Congo now deadliest in country’s history

At least 2,325 people have died from the virus, according to official data, with outbreak on track to be biggest in history

The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is now the deadliest in the country’s history, with at least 2,325 people dead, according to government data, surpassing the toll from the 2018-20 outbreak.

The DRC’s public health institute said confirmed cases had risen to 4,945, including 101 detected in the previous 24 hours.

The World Health Organization has said the outbreak is on track to surpass west Africa’s 2014-16 Ebola outbreak as the biggest in history. The 2014-16 outbreak resulted in 28,616 cases and 11,325 deaths across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, according to WHO data.

What is Ebola and why is WHO treating outbreak as global health emergency?Read moreOn Friday, the UN said Ebola “is winning in the Democratic Republic of the Congo” and said the epidemic was killing one person every 30 minutes.

Six of DRC’s 26 provinces have been affected, mainly those along the country’s north-eastern border. More than 3,400 of the cases have been recorded in Ituri province, where the outbreak was first reported.

The latest numbers of confirmed cases of Ebola in the DRC have made this outbreak – the 17th in the country’s history – the fastest-growing in the known history of the virus. It took almost five months for the 2014-16 west Africa outbreak to reach 1,000 deaths, compared with more than 2,000 deaths in less than three months in this outbreak.

There are no approved vaccines or treatments yet for the rare Bundibugyo strain of the virus that is responsible for the current surge in cases. Nonetheless, 1,000 people in the DRC have recovered from the infection, with 730 still in healthcare or isolation facilities.

View image in fullscreenHealth workers disinfect an ambulance at an Ebola treatment centre in Buni. Photograph: Dirole Lotsima Dieudonne/APClinical trials of two possible treatments for the strain began last month in Ituri. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director general, said last week that two vaccines developed specifically for Bundibugyo were now being tested on people.

Thomas Parisch, a public health specialist recently deployed to the DRC with Médecins Sans Frontières, said: “Normally, as an outbreak progresses, the case fatality ratio should fall as contact tracing improves and patients are identified and treated earlier. Instead, we’re still seeing many cases detected very late, when treatment is less likely to succeed, with many identified only after they die in the community.”

Uganda has reported at least 20 cases, all in the capital, Kampala. The last case reported there was on 21 June and no community transmission has been recorded. The government declared the country Ebola-free on 28 July after the last Ebola patient, a Congolese national, was discharged on 16 July.

View image in fullscreenHealth workers treat an Ebola patient. Photograph: Moses Sawasawa/APIn May, the WHO declared the outbreak in the DRC and Uganda as a public health emergency of international concern. It said sequencing showed the outbreak had started months earlier, in February.

Ebola is transmitted to people from wild animals and then spreads in the human population through direct contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other body fluids of infected people, including dead bodies, and with contaminated surfaces and materials such as bedding or clothing.

View image in fullscreenA health worker dries boots after they are washed to prevent the spread of the Ebola virus. Photograph: Dieudonne Dirole/APAccording to the WHO, symptoms can include fever, fatigue, malaise, muscle pain, headache and sore throat. These are followed by vomiting, diarrhoea, abdominal pain, rash and symptoms of impaired kidney and liver functions.

The response to this outbreak has been hampered by attacks on healthcare facilities, often fuelled by misinformation about safe burial practices, as well as strikes by some unpaid health workers. Decades of unrest and outside interference on traumatised communities, as well as poor health and road infrastructure have also complicated the picture.

More than 70% of people die in the community and not in health centres, said Mohamed Janabi, the WHO’s regional Africa director.

Jean-Paul Malo Lotsima, a civil society official in the Djugu area of Ituri news agency: “People prefer to be treated at home, thinking it is a case of poisoning or some other illness.”

He added: “It’s often at the last minute, when the family realises that the situation is getting worse, that patients are taken to hospital. And sometimes, they die on the way.”

Flavier Ngurima, who lives in Nizi, one of the hotspots of the outbreak in Ituri, said his brother died before reaching the treatment centre. “We had called on a nurse from the family to treat him at home because the patient and the family members were afraid to go to the ETC [treatment centre],” he said. “They said that over there, a lot of people die.