Ebola outbreak spreading at an unprecedented pace, Africa CDC says

The Democratic Republic of Congo's Ebola outbreak is spreading at an unprecedented pace, Africa CDC warns.

A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:

African health officials are warning that the current Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo is spreading faster than any other in history.

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention says the pace of spread is even outstripping the early trajectory of the 2014 West Africa epidemic. Health workers at the epicenter are still operating with limited resources as aid agencies scramble to contain the outbreak.

MARTÍNEZ: Reporter Emmet Livingstone is in the DRC capital of Kinshasa. Emmet, tell us just how bad the situation is.

EMMET LIVINGSTONE: The situation is pretty bad, and health workers are still fighting an uphill battle to bring this outbreak under control. Since it was declared on May 15, confirmed cases of Ebola have spread across a wide expanse. Ituri, a province in eastern Congo about the size of West Virginia, is the epicenter of the outbreak with about 94% of recorded cases in Congo. And according to Congolese health authorities, the virus has now spread to half of the province's health zones.

Now, it's hard to gauge the scale of this crisis, but there are clues that suggest it's much larger than the official figures suggest. Over the weekend, 71 new cases were confirmed across three provinces in eastern Congo, and this jump, according to Congolese health authorities, show that there is, quote, "rapid and ongoing" community transmission. The Congolese government has stopped publishing figures on the total number of suspected cases, but aid officials say that they suspect them to be in the thousands.

MARTÍNEZ: Wow. How's the health response going?

LIVINGSTONE: So there's a massive international effort to stop the spread of the virus that's underway with financing from the U.S., the EU, U.N. and NGOs. But according to health workers, this is still really in its early days. Ituri has been decimated by decades of conflict, and its health infrastructure is extremely weak. In Mongbwalu, the town the worst hit by the virus, NGOs have started building new treatment facilities from the ground up in order to handle the number of cases. So at the moment, in some instances, Ebola patients are turning up to hospitals that are essentially construction sites.

And another massive challenge is isolating suspected Ebola cases and also contact tracing. According to the latest figures, health workers are only managing to trace the contacts of about 40% of the confirmed cases in Ituri. Dozens of people have also left treatment centers and returned to their communities. But there is some good news. Testing capacity, which was a huge problem in the initial weeks of the outbreak, has recently improved.

MARTÍNEZ: And some people are being healed, though.

LIVINGSTONE: Right. So some people are recovering from Ebola. On Saturday, Peter Stafford, an American doctor who had contracted Ebola in eastern Congo and was evacuated to Germany, was released from a medical facility after repeated negative tests. Inside Congo, too, some patients are getting better. Health authorities said that over the weekend, three new people had been healed, bringing the total number to 12. And what this shows is that the virus isn't necessarily a death sentence. It's still extremely dangerous, but the species of Ebola virus that's circulating appears to have a slightly lower mortality rate than more common variants. Experts are saying that the chances of recovery are much higher if patients seek appropriate medical care early. But really, that's the whole problem in a nutshell - access to appropriate medical care.

MARTÍNEZ: All right, that's Emmet Livingstone in Kinshasa. Emmet, thank you very much.

LIVINGSTONE: Thank you.

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