Africa’s latest outbreak of Ebola has passed 10,000 confirmed cases, the vast majority of them in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Congolese health authorities said on Tuesday, with almost 5,000 fatalities.
According to the DRC’s figures, 10,060 people have been infected and 4,887 have died since the virus was first detected in May in the vast central African country’s deadliest outbreak in its history.
Cases have likewise been detected in Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda, with the World Health Organization warning that Africa faces a “complex” task to contain an outbreak spanning the east, west and centre of the continent.
While some 2,684 have recovered from the virus in the DRC, the epidemic’s fatality rate appears to be close to 50 percent, according to the Congolese National Institute of Public Health.
Among the many challenges facing the response is the lack of any approved vaccines or treatments for the rare Bundibugyo species of Ebola behind the epidemic.
After spreading under the radar for weeks, the virus was first detected in the northeastern Congolese province of Ituri, kicking off the DRC’s 17th outbreak of the disease.
It has since spread across swathes of the country’s north and east, which is plagued by a litany of violence by various armed groups and where trust in a faraway and long-absent state is low.
Ituri and the eastern North Kivu province, the latter of which is partially controlled by the Rwanda-backed M23 militia, account for the majority of reported cases.
