Congo Ebola Deaths Top 2,000           08/11 06:14

   

   BUNIA, Congo (AP) -- At least 2,000 people have died in Congo's Ebola 
outbreak, the fastest-growing on record, according to the latest data, as 
health authorities struggle to get help to remote localities due to rebel 
conflict, bad roads and work stoppages over payment issues.

   Government data published overnight into Tuesday showed the outbreak has 
recorded a total of 4,381 confirmed cases, including 2,011 deaths. A total of 
704 patients are in admission and isolation.

   The outbreak was declared on May 15 but health authorities say sequencing 
showed it began months earlier, in February.

   While it took about nine weeks for the outbreak to record the first 1,000 
deaths, it's taken just around three weeks for the figure to double, an 
evidence that the health crisis is moving faster than efforts to track and 
manage it.

   It's already the second-largest outbreak in history, only behind the 
2014-2016 West Africa outbreak that recorded more than 28,000 cases including 
over 11,000 deaths.

   The Ebola outbreak is unlike most previous ones because the rare Bundibugyo 
virus responsible for it has no approved vaccines or treatments. Clinical 
trials for those have begun in Ituri province, the epicenter of the outbreak, 
in eastern Congo.

   Aid workers say the outbreak continues to outpace response that's been 
expanding across the five eastern provinces affected. Many health workers have 
gone on strike to protest lack of payment for their work since the outbreak was 
declared. And WHO has said most new cases are still being recorded outside of 
contacts being monitored, showing that transmission remains out of the control 
of health workers.

   Ebola can be caused by different types of virus. Although the type 
responsible for the 2014-2016 outbreak is considered the deadliest, government 
data shows this Bundibugyo outbreak has killed a higher percentage of people as 
care and support are not getting to patients quickly enough. Many cases are 
reporting symptoms late or not at all.

   The ongoing outbreak has so far had a case fatality rate of 45.9%, more than 
the 39.6% rate recorded in the 2014-2016 West Africa outbreak.

   "In the absence of an effective vaccine, control (for the outbreak) rests on 
identifying cases and then nursing them in secure facilities until they recover 
or sadly perish," said Paul Hunter, a professor in medicine at the University 
of East Anglia in the U.K.

   In a remote region like this with an ongoing conflict and interrupted 
communications, routine surveillance can be very difficult and "identifying 
cases early enough to prevent spread can be impossible," said Hunter.

   The World Health Organization said on Monday that at the onset of the 
outbreak in one of Congo's most remote and vulnerable areas, some cases were 
wrongly attributed to malaria and typhoid, and that early testing was conducted 
for the more common type of Ebola.

   The WHO regional director for Africa, Dr. Mohamed Yakub Janabi, told a news 
conference that officials are "chasing the virus, the virus is ahead of us."

   The first Ebola virus to be identified was in 1976 near the Ebola River in 
what is now Congo. The current outbreak is the 17th -- and largest -- the 
Central African nation has faced.