{"id":455094,"date":"2026-05-18T15:54:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T15:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/455094\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T15:54:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T15:54:08","slug":"health-workers-race-to-respond-to-congos-fast-spreading-ebola-outbreak-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/455094\/","title":{"rendered":"Health workers race to respond to Congo\u2019s fast-spreading Ebola outbreak \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Medical personnel are rushing \u200cto the front lines of a new Ebola<\/a> outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo<\/a> (DRC) whose late detection and quick spread have alarmed health experts. <\/p>\n

The World Health Organisation<\/a> (WHO) on Sunday declared the outbreak \u200ba public health emergency of international concern because of the high risk the disease could spread further beyond DRC\u2019s borders after two cases were confirmed in Kampala, the capital of neighbouring Uganda.<\/p>\n

The outbreak is suspected to have killed around 80 people in recent weeks, with eight cases confirmed by laboratory testing and 246 suspected cases reported in eastern DRC\u2019s Ituri province. <\/p>\n

Another case was confirmed in neighbouring North Kivu province\u2019s capital, Goma, \u200baccording to the M23 rebels who control the city. <\/p>\n

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also said on Sunday that it was supporting partners withdrawing a small number of directly affected Americans.<\/p>\n

A delegation led \u2060by DRC health minister Samuel Roger Kamba arrived in Ituri\u2019s capital Bunia on Sunday with tents to set up treatment centres to support strained local \u200chospitals. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis \u200cis \u200bnot a mystical disease,\u201d he said. \u201cMake yourself known so that you can be taken care of and so that we can prevent the disease from spreading.\u201d<\/p>\n

WHO\u2019s representative in DRC, Anne Ancia, said WHO had emptied its stocks of protective equipment in \u2060the capital Kinshasa and was now preparing a cargo plane to \u200bbring additional supplies from a depot in Kenya.<\/p>\n

The International Rescue Committee and Medecins Sans Frontieres \u200baid groups said on Monday they had teams responding to the outbreak.<\/p>\n

The current outbreak is caused by the Bundibugyo virus, which unlike the \u200cmore common Zaire strain of Ebola, has no approved virus-specific therapeutics \u200bor vaccine.<\/p>\n

An outbreak from 2018-2020 in North Kivu and Ituri provinces was the second deadliest on record, killing nearly 2,300 people.<\/p>\n

The response to that outbreak \u2060was complicated by widespread armed violence in eastern Congo and distrust of \u2060first responders by locals. In recent weeks, \u200bclashes between rival armed groups in Ituri have killed scores of civilians, worsening an already-dire humanitarian situation.<\/p>\n

\"AA first case of Ebola infection has been reported in Goma, a major city in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Photograph: Jospin Mwisha\/AFP via Getty <\/p>\n

Jean Pierre Badombo, the former mayor of Mongbwalu, a mining town in Ituri at the epicentre of the outbreak, said people started falling ill in mid-April after a large open-casket funeral procession arrived from Bunia.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter that, we experienced a cascade of deaths,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday that WHO first learned of suspected cases on May 5th and dispatched a team to Ituri, but samples collected in the field initially tested negative. Subsequent tests in Kinshasa confirmed positive cases on May 14th, and WHO declared the outbreak the following day.<\/p>\n

Lievin Bangali, IRC\u2019s senior health coordinator in DRC, said declining funding from international donors had weakened disease detection.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen surveillance networks \u200cbreak down, dangerous diseases like Ebola are \u2060able to spread further and faster before communities and health workers can respond,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Congo has experienced 17 outbreaks of Ebola since the virus was first identified in the country in 1976. The disease spreads through direct contact with the bodily fluids of \u200cinfected people or contaminated materials.<\/p>\n

According to WHO, the average fatality rate from Ebola is around 50 per cent, varying from 25-90 per cent in past outbreaks.<\/p>\n

Uganda on Sunday postponed next month\u2019s celebrations of martyrs\u2019 day, a national \u200bholiday that typically attracts thousands of pilgrims from eastern DRC, because of the outbreak.<\/p>\n

Kithula Haggai Sunday, a doctor \u200bat Uganda\u2019s health ministry, told an online briefing that several people from western Uganda who had recently gone to a burial in eastern Congo and then returned home were under observation, with some who developed symptoms taken to the city of Fort Portal. \u2013 Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Medical personnel are rushing \u200cto the front lines of a new Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":455095,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[8044,196728,103,61,60,31614],"class_list":["post-455094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-democratic-republic-of-congo","tag-ebola-disease","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-world-health-organisation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=455094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/455095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=455094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=455094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=455094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}