WHO says it wants to end the Ebola epidemic in the DRC by six months

The outbreak of Ebola raging in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo is expected to end within six months, said Thursday the President of the World Health Organization.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, chief executive of WHO, told reporters, seven months into the outbreak of the outbreak in the violence-ridden North Kivu province, that the spread of the virus was clearly in course.

"Our goal now is to complete it in the next six months," he told reporters in Geneva, warning that an increase in unrest in the affected area could reverse progress.

"It is always good to plan beyond the horizon to prepare for any eventuality," he said, while expressing optimism about efforts to contain the epidemic.

The Ebola outbreak, the tenth of the DRC's history, first appeared in North Kivu in August 2018 and then spread to the neighboring province of Ituri.

The UN said that 584 lives out of nearly 1,000 would have been contaminated, the WHO said.

Security in eastern DRC, a region beset by rebel fighters, has greatly complicated the intervention, with many attacks against Ebola treatment centers.

The medical charity Medical Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has also sounded the alarm bells about its increasingly "toxic" relationships with local communities, including resistance to efforts to fight the virus Ebola has also fueled the spread.

MSF pointed out that 40% of highly contagious virus deaths occur in communities rather than in Ebola treatment centers.

"Contractualisation"

"The Ebola response fails to control the epidemic," Joanne Lieu, director of MSF, told reporters last week in Geneva.

But Tedros denied Thursday that it was the case.

"It's not true," he says. "You can not say that it's a failure when the epidemic contracts. It's in contraction."

He pointed out that in the past seven months, the virus had been contained in North Kivu and Ituri.

"It has not spread to other parts of the country and neighboring countries," he said, adding that the transmission had been interrupted in several localities, including Beni and Mangina.

"So business is shrinking in some areas," he said.

Tedros also pointed out that the number of new cases had been halved since January, with an average of 25 new cases reported each week, compared with 50 at the beginning of the year.

However, he acknowledged that violence, unrest and community resistance remained a problem in Butembo, in particular, where the spread of the virus with Katwa is currently concentrated.

"I do not want to minimize the risk, because it could again (re-emerge) if the security situation continues to deteriorate," he said, acknowledging that it was still possible for the Ebola virus to spread to from other parts of the DRC and to neighboring countries.

© 2019 AFP