Having returned from a trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo, the world health organisaiton chief is sounding the alarm on the ebola outbreak. He met with the country’s president and praised for his endeavours to fight the outbreak.
But so far, he says it’s not enough: according to the head of the World Health Organisation, the epidemic is already breaking troubling records.
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said,“it is already the second-biggest Ebola epidemic on record, and it is moving faster than any previous Ebola outbreak. At its current pace, it is on track to eclipse the West African Ebola outbreak of 2014 to 2016. Officially, 4,449 confirmed cases have been reported, with 2,061 deaths across five provinces and 53 health zones.”
He added concern that deaths are also occuring in locations where there are no treatment centres, as this means that contact tracing in these places is more difficult.
“Most concerningly, we see a high proportion of deaths in communities instead of treatment units, outside of known contact lists. That tells us there are chains of transmission we don’t know about, and until we know about – and break – every chain of transmission, we will not stop the outbreak,” he added.
The current outbreak is fuelled by the bundibugyo variant The WHO chief added that it looks set to overtake the West African Ebola outbreak of 2014 to 2016.
