Ebola outbreak<\/a> in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) could become deadlier than the worst outbreak on record, which killed more than 11,000 people, says the head of Africa\u2019s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC).<\/p>\n\u2060The \u2060number of confirmed cases in \u2060the country has increased to 837, including 196 deaths, \u200cgovernment data showed on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIf we don\u2019t stop the outbreak very soon, it will be worse than what we had in West Africa and eastern DRC,\u201d\u00a0Africa CDC Director-General Jean Kaseya said during a virtual meeting of African leaders and international donors in Burundi on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Kaseya said tens of thousands of people who may have been exposed to Ebola had not yet been traced or contacted.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe contact tracing is a major indicator and a major issue. We are missing more than 26,000 people, and we don\u2019t know where they are, and we don\u2019t know if they are contaminating other people.\u201d<\/p>\n
A \u2060Red Cross official said that the epidemic had not yet peaked in the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe \u2060are afraid that this could last one year to end this disease,\u201d Bruno Michon, operations manager for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said.<\/p>\n
The response has been hampered by a lack of treatment centres and by community resistance to stringent hygiene measures. Health officials said that, more than a month since \u2060the outbreak was declared, the true scale was still unknown.<\/p>\n
The bodies of \u2060Ebola victims are highly infectious after death, and unsafe traditional burials \u2013 in which family members handle \u2060the body without proper protective equipment \u2013 are a leading driver of transmission.<\/p>\n
So far, the continent has raised less than a fifth of the $518 million it is seeking to bolster measures to contain the outbreak, according to Burundi\u2019s President Evariste Ndayishimiye, who also chairs the African Union.<\/p>\n
The shortfall has raised concern among authorities, who fear the consequences could be devastating if the virus is not brought under control quickly.<\/p>\n
There is no approved treatment or vaccine for this strain of Ebola. The World Health Organization (WHO) says it could take up to nine months for a vaccine to be ready.<\/p>\n
Neighbouring Uganda has recorded 19 cases, 14 of them among people who had travelled from the DRC. The country has also reported two deaths.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The \u2060number of confirmed cases in \u2060the country has \u200bincreased to 837, including 196 deaths. Published On 16…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":741309,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[5684,214105,49,48,70195,67435,3456,637,84,13199,44,4075,772,1690,16119],"class_list":["post-741308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-africa","tag-burundi","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-democratic-republic-of-the-congo","tag-ebola","tag-europe","tag-france","tag-health","tag-humanitarian-crises","tag-news","tag-uganda","tag-united-states","tag-us-canada","tag-world-health-organization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=741308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/741309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=741308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=741308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=741308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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