London
Thomson Reuters Foundation
The number of Ebola cases in Democratic Republic of Congo has topped 2,000, according to new government figures that show the growth of the epidemic is gaining pace.
The world’s second-biggest outbreak has killed 1,346 people since it was detected in August last year.
Furana Katungu, two, who is confirmed to be suffering from Ebola, is cared by ebola survivor Jeanine Masika Mbuka inside the Biosecure Emergency Care Unit at the ALIMA Ebola treatment centre in Beni, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, on 1st April, 2019. PICTURE: Reuters/Baz Ratner /File Photo
It is the first time Ebola has struck in a conflict zone and the World Health Organization has said the outbreak is unlikely to be contained unless violence stops.
Here are some key facts and figures about Ebola:
• The world’s worst epidemic of Ebola, a hemorrhagic fever, began in Guinea in December, 2013, and swept through Liberia and Sierra Leone, killing more than 11,300 people by 2016;
• Ebola causes fever, flu-like pains, bleeding, vomiting and diarrhoea and spreads among humans through contact with bodily fluids of an infected person;
• The world’s second-biggest outbreak of Ebola began in August, 2018, in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, shortly after the country had quashed another outbreak;
• As of 3rd June, 2019, Congo’s health ministry reported 2,008 confirmed and probable cases with a death toll of 1,346;
• A mob killed an Ebola health worker and looted a clinic last week, one of many attacks by civilians and armed groups which have forced health workers to suspend activities and caused the number of cases to spike;
• Between January and early May, there were 42 attacks on health facilities, with 85 workers either injured or killed, according to WHO figures;
• Communities’ lack of trust in the responders remains a major obstacle, with many people avoiding treatment because they do not believe Ebola is real, according to Oxfam; and,
• This is Congo’s 10th Ebola outbreak since the virus was discovered there in 1976.
