The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has passed 2,500 deaths and is now growing exponentially, according to the United Nations, with roughly half of those deaths recorded in just the last 20 days. It is already the largest and fastest spreading Ebola outbreak in the country’s history, and it has no approved vaccine or treatment for the specific viral strain involved.
UN senior Ebola coordinator Julien Harneis, who leads the international response, has said the epidemic is doubling roughly every 20 days, the fastest rate ever recorded for an Ebola outbreak. The virus has now spread across an area larger than France, and more than 160 healthcare workers have themselves contracted Ebola while responding to it, with dozens of those workers among the dead.
Why Is This Outbreak Outrunning the Response Meant to Stop It?
Part of the answer is straightforwardly violent: health workers in the affected region have faced more than 260 attacks in the past six months, several of them fatal, which slows contact tracing and treatment in exactly the areas where the virus is spreading fastest. Part of it is logistical, aid organizations have said existing funding for the response is set to run out within weeks even as case counts keep climbing.
Harneis wrote that when the death toll first passed 2,000, half of those had died in just the prior 20 days, a curve that has only gotten steeper since. “All of us in the response, aid workers, organisations, governments, donors, with the community, must do more, and do it today, to save lives and stop Ebola,” he said. The math behind an exponential outbreak does not wait for funding cycles or security conditions to improve on their own, and right now, neither is improving fast enough to catch up.
