For about a year, helpers in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been fighting against the Ebola epidemic. Nevertheless, the number of those affected continues to rise, meanwhile more than 2,000 people have died, more than 3,000 have become infected. This was announced by the Congolese authorities on Friday. According to that, on average almost 80 people get sick each week.
The outbreak mainly affected the provinces of North Kivu and Ituri in the east of the country. Several militias are active in the region, and helpers are repeatedly the target of armed attacks. There are also rumors circulating that Ebola does not exist and that treating physicians are stealing blood and body parts for witchcraft. This also makes the work of the helpers more difficult.
The World Health Organization (WHO) described the situation as one of the currently largest and most difficult humanitarian crises. She called for increased efforts to deal with the situation. There is an urgent need to strengthen the local health care system, said WHO Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Neighboring country Uganda: Nine-year-old died of Ebola
The affected region is in the immediate vicinity of Uganda. There, the fourth Ebola case had been reported on Friday. The virus was detected in a nine-year-old, who had come in with her mother from Congo, the authorities said. Health workers had recognized the possible infection at border controls and isolated the girl.
For this reason, it is unlikely that other people in Uganda have been infected, according to the authorities. The nine-year-old could not be helped, she died last night. The authorities are currently organizing their safe repatriation to the Congo so that they can be buried there without any further infecting people.
"There is a real risk that the epidemic will continue for at least another year," the relief organization Save the Children wrote in a recent statement regarding the case. Among the 2000 victims are well over 500 children. "We do not want to continue counting deaths, and the international community needs to provide new resources to prevent the virus from spreading in the region and claiming more victims."
Therapy with antibodies from survivors
Hopes, on the other hand, are two experimental therapies. They were so good at first attempts that they should be offered to all patients in Congo, they say. The therapies are based on the use of antibodies, in one agent, the antibodies of a survivor served as a model.
When patients were treated with the remedy within days of infection, 89 percent survived. The other remedy, a cocktail of different antibodies, was even 94 percent. By comparison, around 70 percent of those infected die without the medication during the current outbreak.
There is also an experimental vaccine that has been used to vaccinate around 200,000 people in the Congo. The funds were mainly offered to help workers and contact persons of infected persons. In the first study, the vaccine protected 97.5 percent of the cases from infection, but it is not approved yet.
The development of medicines and vaccines had been boosted after more than 11,000 people died in a devastating Ebola epidemic in West Africa in 2014/2015. The current eruption in the Congo is the second most severe ever reported outbreak of the deadly virus.
