Two Ebola cases have been confirmed in North Ubangi, a province in the northwest of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that borders the Central African Republic, according to RFI. One person is ill and another has died. The information has not yet been officially announced. The cases mark a further geographic expansion of an outbreak that the World Health Organization (WHO) says remains out of control.
Both victims are in the Wapinda health zone, a mining town on the border with the Central African Republic. A source close to the response told RFI the cases appear linked to those already recorded in neighbouring South Ubangi province. In early September, a man fell ill while travelling by boat on the Congo River from Kisangani, a major city in the country's north. Contacts of that patient were identified, and some travelled by motorbike towards North Ubangi. "We were therefore prepared for confirmed cases to be recorded in the area," the source said. Authorities have deployed a response team of seven experts to trace and isolate high-risk contacts and stop the disease from spreading further in the region.
The new cases come as the national toll continues to climb. As of Wednesday, the Health Ministry had reported 9,066 confirmed cases and 4,381 deaths. The outbreak, the 17th in the country's history, is concentrated in Ituri province in the east and is described as the deadliest of any previous Ebola outbreak in the DRC. The WHO has said it is on track to surpass the 2014–2016 West Africa epidemic, the deadliest on record, which killed more than 11,000 people, mainly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
The response faces severe obstacles. Insecurity, displacement, a health workers' strike and intense population movements are all fuelling the spread. Separate reporting has pointed to new attacks attributed to the Islamist ADF group in the east that complicate efforts to contain the disease.
The outbreak is caused by the Bundibugyo strain, a less common form of Ebola for which there is no licensed vaccine or treatment. On Friday, health and other frontline workers in Beni, in North Kivu province, began receiving the Ervebo vaccine. Ervebo has proved effective against the more common Zaire strain, and health authorities say it may offer some protection against Bundibugyo because the viruses are related, though this is still being studied. It is being used under a compassionate-use programme, which allows unapproved uses of a medical product in serious disease situations. The WHO said in August that 70,000 doses had been approved for Congo: about 50,000 for frontline workers and 20,000 for a clinical trial.
Dr Mohamed Janabi, the WHO's regional director for Africa, said supportive care such as blood transfusions, oxygen and antibiotics can improve survival chances, and that 2,400 people have survived Ebola in this outbreak. The spread to a border area, however, raises the stakes for containment, since movement across the frontier could carry the virus beyond Congo.