Thousands die as DR Congo faces fastest growing Ebola outbreak on record

An Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has killed 2,011 people out of 4,381 confirmed cases of the virus, Congolese officials said on Tuesday. The latest toll puts it close behind the DR Congo's deadliest Ebola outbreak in 2018 to 2020 when nearly 2,300 people died out of 3,500 recorded cases. The Ebola outbreak, which has hit the DR Congo's conflict-plagued eastern and northeastern regions, was declared on May 15 but is thought to have already been spreading for several weeks. While it took about nine weeks for the outbreak to record the first 1,000 deaths, it’s taken just around three weeks for the figure to double, an evidence that the health crisis is moving faster than efforts to track and manage it. It is the DR Congo's 17th surge of the highly contagious disease and is already considered the largest in the country's history "and could well become the largest outbreak ever", Sania Nishtar, chief executive of the Gavi global vaccine alliance, has said. Read moreDR Congo’s Ebola outbreak outpaces response as health workers strike over pay Aid workers say the outbreak continues to outpace response that’s been expanding across the five eastern provinces affec...