The current Ebola Bundibugyo outbreak is three times larger than any other Ebola outbreak was four weeks after being declared a public health emergency, Africa CDC revealed at a media briefing on Thursday.

This Ebola outbreak was declared a public health emergency on 17 May, and there are currently 875 cases and 202 deaths, Africa CDC epidemiologist Dr Wessam Mankoula told the briefing.

The biggest Ebola outbreak in history, which affected West Africa and infected an estimated 28,600 people, had only registered 242 cases in four weeks – but that outbreak took almost three years to contain.

Where’s the money?

Meanwhile, less than 10% of the money pledged to address the outbreak has been released to responders, Mankoula said.

On Tuesday, Burundi’s President Évariste Ndayishimiye, Chairperson of the African Union (AU), convened an emergency high-level meeting of African leaders, Africa CDC, the World Health Organization (WHO), Regional Economic Communities, partners and donors to accelerate the Ebola response in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Uganda.

The meeting mobilised $910 million in pledges, including $80 million from African member states.  However, only around $90 million of this has reached countries, which is hampering the response, Mankoula added.

The high-level meeting resolved to ensure that the full $518 million required for the joint continental preparedness and response plan is mobilised and disbursed within the next four weeks. 

The plan covers immediate response needs in affected areas and preparedness in at-risk countries, including surveillance, contact tracing, laboratory capacity, case management, infection prevention and control, risk communication, community engagement, logistics, medical countermeasures and cross-border coordination.

“The priority now is speed. Every pledge must translate into financing, supplies, people and support reaching the communities and responders on the ground,” said Dr Jean Kaseya, Director-General of Africa CDC.

Case fatality, contact tracing

Over the past week, there has been a 38% increase in cases in the DRC, with Ituri province still the heart of the outbreak, while North Kivu and South Kivu are also affected.

The case fatality rate (CFR) in the DRC is 23%, and nine treatment centres in the DRC’s Ituri province are over 90% full. 

There have been 67 recoveries in the DRC, while there have been seven recoveries in Uganda – which has only reported 19 cases and two deaths (a CFR of 10%), a figure that has remained stable for the past few weeks.

“Unfortunately, North Kivu, because of insecurity situation, is not accessible for most of the responders, and we are seeing a high case fatality rate coming from North Kivu, and also this is the lowest among the three provinces when we speak about the rate of the contact tracing,” said Mankoula.

Contact tracing is still lagging in the DRC, with around 6,000 listed contacts – whereas there should be 17,000 to 35,000 based on an estimated 20-40 contacts per patient.

Of the 6,000 contacts, around 4,000 have been traced – meaning that only around 15% of expected contacts have been identified and checked.

However, “testing capacity improved significantly”, said Mankoula, with almost no backlog in comparison to the five- to eight-day wait at the start of the outbreak.