‘Containing Ebola in DRC war zone is challenging‘

GeNevA: Containing an Ebola outbreak in a “war zone” in the Democratic Republic of Congo is among the most difficult challenges the World Health Organization has faced, a top official said

The outbreak declared in North Kivu province on Aug 1 poses the same problems as past cases in the DRC, including major logistical hurdles in a volatile country with weak health infrastructure.

But in North Kivu, health workers will have to navigate their response among more than 100 armed groups, 20 of whom are “highly active,” WHO’s emergency response chief Peter Salama told reporters.

“On the scale of degree of difficulty, trying to extinguish an outbreak of a deadly highthreat pathogen in a war zone reaches the top of any of our scales,” he said.

The outbreak in North Kivu in eastern DRC was declared a week after WHO and the Kinshasa government hailed the end of an Ebola flareup in northwestern Equateur province, which killed 33 people.

Salama underscored that the successful containment of the Equateur outbreak in just 10 weeks required arduous travel around a remote region, tracing and vaccinating people who may have been exposed to the virus.

The same recipe for success is required in North Kivu, but for now health workers do not know what level of access they will have to those affected.

WHO will rely on UN peacekeepers to assess how to safely travel, Salama said. — AFP