Why are experts warning latest Ebola outbreak could be ‘worst ever’?
The virus is spreading faster than health workers can track it and international funding has slumped. The deadly Ebola virus outbreak in eastern Africa could
The virus is spreading faster than health workers can track it and international funding has slumped. The deadly Ebola virus outbreak in eastern Africa could be the “worst ever” in history, the director-general of Africa’s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, Jean Kaseya, has warned. Kaseya sounded the alarm on Tuesday during a virtual meeting of African heads of state and international donors in Burundi. At least 837 people have been infected in the epicentre of the outbreak, the Democratic Republic of Congo, while 196 people have died, authorities say. In neighbouring Uganda, 19 cases and two deaths have been reported. “If we don’t stop the outbreak very soon, it will be worse than what we had in West Africa and eastern DRC,” Kaseya said, referring to previous outbreaks of the virus in West Africa in 2014, which resulted in the deaths of more than 11,000 people, and a later one in the DRC in 2018 that led to the deaths of more than 2,000. Here’s what we know about why health officials fear this outbreak could be even worse What is Ebola? Ebola disease is a viral haemorrhagic fever that can result in death. It is spread through bodily fluids, and victims remain highly infectious after death. Three known forms of the virus cause large outbreaks of the disease: Zaire virus, Sudan virus and the Bundibugyo virus, which has caused the current outbreak. The Zaire strain caused previous outbreaks in the DRC and in West Africa. Both the Zaire and the Bundibugyo strains have a fairly high death rate of between 30 percent and 50 percent. The West Africa outbreak was the largest on record: It spread to several countries and infected nearly 29,000 people between 2014 and 2016, including nationals of Italy and the United States.
Two vaccines and experimental treatments for the Zaire strain were developed. In the 2018-2020 DRC outbreak, the second-largest, some 3,400 people were infected. However, officials vaccinated more than 300,000 and deployed approved treatment. How is this latest outbreak different? Although the Bundibugyo virus has appeared before – in 2007 and 2012 in eastern DRC – it is rarer than other forms of Ebola, and there are currently no approved vaccines or treatments for it, although these are in early stages of development. Vaccines which were developed to combat the Zaire form cannot simply be used to prevent Bundibugyo without World Health Organization (WHO) testing and approval. Analysts say this strain has so far been ignored because of its rarity. “It’s not something that attracts the attention of research and development for pharmaceutical companies, for companies that are making vaccines,” Trish Newport, deputy manager of Ebola programmes in DRC for Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, told Al Jazeera. “For them, they don’t see it as a priority. This is definitely one of the reasons why it wasn’t put on the priority list, why there weren’t resources for it and why it’s only being trialled right now.” Why could this be the ‘worst ever’ outbreak of Ebola? First, because there’s no approved vaccine or treatment for Bundibugyo, health workers have little option other than to manage symptoms of the deadly disease as they would an outbreak of flu. This outbreak is also taking place against the backdrop of an ongoing conflict. Eastern DRC, where the virus is spreading, has become a battlefield on which armed groups, most notably the M23 rebel group, are battling government forces despite ongoing diplomatic efforts to end the conflict.
The BriefWire