The second worst Ebola epidemic in history kills 66% of those infected

The current outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has infected 1,720 people and killed 1,136, giving the virus disease a record 66% mortality rate. And the situation is making public health experts more and more nervous on the ground.

This is the second most serious outbreak of Ebola in history and more than 110 cases have been identified in the past week alone, but the World Health Organization warns that "these numbers are likely to continue to increase", as health workers tackle the accumulated delay following a major disruption. health services by armed militias.

The worst Ebola outbreak in history was recorded in West Africa from 2014 to 2016 and affected nearly 30,000 people, killing more than 11,000 people. And even though the current outbreak has not hit so many people, health officials on the ground are sounding the alarm to attract more attention from the international community.

"Nobody knows it, either at the scale of West Africa or at its absolute scale, but this figure is huge in comparison with any other home in Africa. The story of Ebola and it continues to grow, "Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, told the Guardian.

Fortunately, the epidemic has so far been relatively geographically limited, but it is feared that an infected person could move from DRC to neighboring Uganda and make it an international crisis. The World Health Organization refused to declare the current Ebola outbreak a global health emergency on April 12, largely because the viral disease had not spread outside. of the DRC. At this point, 1,206 people had been infected and 764 people had been killed.

"It's remarkable, it has not spread more geographically but the numbers are scary and the fact that they are climbing is terrifying," said Farrar.

In addition to its 66% mortality rate, the last epidemic is scary in some respects. Children, for example, are particularly affected, with almost one third of children under 18 years old.

The good news is that health officials in the field are now armed with an experimental vaccine called V920, created by Merck, which has been extremely effective. But the number of doses of vaccine is relatively limited and it takes some time after getting the vaccine for it to work.

The latest figures indicate that more than 114,553 people in the region have been vaccinated against Ebola, including more than 28,000 health workers. One of the new cases of Ebola diagnosed this week was a health worker who had been vaccinated about 10 days earlier, which unfortunately was not enough for the vaccine to start acting. The vaccine is usually effective after 10 days, said a Merck representative in Gizmodo by email.

Many other factors are hurting health workers on the ground today, including widespread violence in the DRC and the rapid spread of misinformation, even among some health workers who feel they should not be vaccinated. Some people think that Ebola is not a real danger to public health, while others think that Ebola has been introduced to the region simply to earn money from the local population. About 36 percent of DRC residents believe that Ebola does not even exist.

Dr. Richard Valery Mouzoko Kiboung, a Cameroonian epidemiologist who traveled to the DRC to treat patients with Ebola, was killed last month in one of the many violent attacks that regularly occur against professionals. of health. But it is not only violence against workers that is contributing to the spread of the Ebola virus. Local militias are fighting the government and the violence, even if it does not target the doctors and nurses responsible for Ebola, can result in the suspension of treatment for days, leaving a break window that allows the disease spread without people being treated.

Militia attacks have also caused the flight of large groups of people, potentially contributing to the rapid spread of diseases such as the Ebola virus. For example, fighting in the provinces of North Kivu and Ituri has recently displaced thousands, including about 100,000 in North Kivu.

The Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policies of the University of Minnesota noted that a group of militias allied with the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) had dramatically escalated its attacks in recent months. The group wants to make the DRC what it calls the Califat Province of Central Africa and has taken credit for attacks against Ebola treatment centers.

"Violent attacks are causing fear, maintain mistrust and further exacerbate the multitude of problems faced by front-line health workers," WHO said in a statement released late last week. . "Without the commitment of all groups to end these attacks, it is unlikely that this [Ebola] the epidemic can remain successfully contained in the provinces of North Kivu and Ituri. "

The South Korean government announced yesterday that it would send $ 500,000 to the DRC's Ebola efforts, but public health officials are very worried that they will not get the money to fight the Ebola virus effectively.

"We are entering a phase where we will need major changes in the response," said the Director-General of WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, recently, during a trip to the DRC. "The WHO and its partners can not meet these challenges without the international community intervening to fill the funding gap."

The long and the short of it? The vaccine has been amazing and is an excellent tool for fighting the Ebola virus. But if the fighting continues, more people will be infected. And it becomes much more likely that this epidemic will become uncontrollable.