The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) has warned of mounting operational constraints hampering Ebola response in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), while praising Uganda for successfully containing the outbreak.During an online press briefing on Thursday evening, Africa CDC Director-General Jean Kaseya stressed that the continued outbreak “is the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak ever recorded” and is now the second-largest by total confirmed cases.”It is a very serious outbreak. We are now fighting because we don’t want this outbreak to become the (largest ever) Ebola outbreak,” he said.According to Kaseya, he will join World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to visit Bunia, the capital of the eastern DRC’s Ituri Province and the epicenter of the outbreak, on Aug. 2. They are scheduled to meet with national authorities, frontline health workers, affected communities, and response partners.”We really need to strengthen our capacity to stop the spread of this outbreak to other new zones. We need to continue to strengthen the capacity to detect early, and to respond appropriately,” he said.According to the latest data from the Africa CDC and the DRC health authorities, since the DRC declared its 17th Ebola outbreak on May 15, the country has recorded a total of 3,442 confirmed cases and 1,521 deaths, representing a case fatality rate of more than 44%. A total of 48 health zones are now affected by the outbreak across five provinces in the country.
