Congo Ebola outbreak reaches 60 health zones after Biena and Manguredjipa

The Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has reached 60 health zones after Friday’s figures added Biena and Manguredjipa in North Kivu. The health ministry counted 5,794 confirmed cases and 2,786 deaths. The national case fatality rate is about 48 percent. In North Kivu it is close to 69 percent. The ministry blamed delayed response in that province. Most cases still sit in Ituri, whose capital Bunia has been the centre of the public count.

Officials declared the outbreak in mid-May and now say the virus had been moving since February. It has gone from three health zones to 60. A large share of new infections is appearing outside known contact lists, which means tracing is behind the virus. Insecurity, displacement, a health workers’ strike and heavy population movement are the conditions the ministry and field agencies name each week. Those conditions have not changed with the two new zones.

The World Health Organization has warned that the death total could pass the roughly 11,000 deaths of the 2014–16 West Africa epidemic if the present speed holds. That comparison is a warning, not a forecast with a date. What the present file already shows is scale and speed that outrun the teams on the ground. Doctors Without Borders said a new treatment centre is meant to cut the time between a suspected case and a bed, and to put more people onto contact lists before they vanish into the next village.

On Thursday, Health Minister Roger Kamba was photographed giving an Ebola vaccine to a health worker in Kisangani. Vaccination is running. It is not running at the pace of 60 zones. A strike among health workers removes the very people who have to jab, trace and bury. Armed groups in North Kivu and Ituri remove the roads. The fatality gap between North Kivu and the national average is what those two facts look like in a spreadsheet.

Uganda, across the border, was declared free of Bundibugyo Ebola this week after a 42-day clock that started when the last patient left hospital on 16 July. Uganda had 20 confirmed cases and two deaths after an outbreak declared on 15 May. The contrast is sharp and slightly misleading. Different species of Ebolavirus, different security maps, different health systems. What it does show is that an outbreak can be closed when contacts are known and gunfire is not the main obstacle. Eastern Congo has the opposite problem.

The next number that matters is not the zone count. It is whether new cases start to appear inside monitored chains rather than outside them. Until that ratio turns, 60 will become a larger figure, and the West Africa comparison will stay on the page.