WHO chief says suspected Ebola deaths at 220 and 'epidemic is outpacing us'

World Health Organisation (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Monday that there had been 220 suspected deaths in the current Ebola outbreak and that a delay in detecting cases meant responders were now “playing catch-up”.

“We are urgently scaling up operations, but at the moment the epidemic is outpacing us,” Tedros said, adding that countries bordering the Democratic Republic of Congo — the epicentre of the outbreak — should take immediate action.

The WHO has declared the outbreak of the rare Bundibugyo strain of Ebola a public health emergency of international concern.

Ebola is a deadly viral disease that spreads through direct contact with bodily fluids. It can cause severe bleeding and organ failure. The Bundibugyo strain has no approved vaccine or treatments.

Tedros said he would travel to Congo on Tuesday and that addressing the fast-moving outbreak was complicated by the fact that Congo’s Ituri and North Kivu provinces were highly insecure and there were no approved vaccines for the Bundibugyo virus.

“As surveillance efforts have been scaled up in the DRC Ebola response, more than 900 suspected cases have been identified so far, including 101 confirmed cases,” the WHO chief said in a social media post.

Uganda confirms 2 more cases, taking total to 7

Uganda, which borders DRC’s Ituri province, said on Monday it has detected two more confirmed cases of Ebola, bringing the total number of cases reported in the country to seven.

The two new cases are health workers in a private health facility in the capital Kampala and both are Ugandans, the health ministry said in a statement.

“Both patients have been admitted to the designated treatment unit and are now receiving care,” the ministry said, adding that response teams were tracing all those who had been in contact with the two people.