GENEVA, Sept 2 (Reuters) – The head of the World Health Organization on Wednesday said the Ebola response needs to be scaled up in order to tackle the outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with tracking the chains of transmission still posing a challenge.
“Until every chain is found and broken, the epidemic will continue and will continue to pose a threat to DRC, its neighbors and the region as a whole,” the WHO’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, told reporters in Geneva.
The number of deaths in Congo’s Ebola outbreak has surpassed 3,000, government data showed on Wednesday, as the country’s worst-ever epidemic continues to spread across its northeast.
The outbreak, caused by the Bundibugyo species of Ebola, became the largest and deadliest in Congo’s history after surpassing the 2018-2020 epidemic.
It is now second only to the 2014-2016 West African outbreak, which infected over 28,600 people and killed more than 11,000 across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Ghebreyesus said many deaths are among people who are not on a list of known contacts.
“That means there are chains of transmission we don’t know about,” he said, adding that many of those who died were still being buried unsafely, which is fueling transmission.
He urged the international community to increase and accelerate funding for the Congolese government-led Ebola response plan, which is seeking $1.3 billion.
“We know that we are making this request at a time when financing for humanitarian assistance has contracted, and when there are many other competing priorities. But as we know from previous Ebola outbreaks, we can control this epidemic if we choose to,” he stated.
(Reporting by Olivia Le Poidevin. Editing by Miranda Murray, Alexandra Hudson)
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