Death toll from Ebola outbreak in Congo tops 1,000

KINSHASA, Congo — More than 1,000 people have died from Ebola in eastern Congo since August, the country’s health minister said Friday, as hostility toward health workers continues to hamper efforts to contain the second-deadliest outbreak of the virus.

Health Minister Oly Ilunga told The Associated Press that four deaths in the outbreak’s epicenter of Katwa helped push the death toll to 1,008. Two more deaths were reported in the city of Butembo.

The outbreak declared almost nine months ago already had caused the most deaths since the 2014-2016 outbreak in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia that killed more than 11,000 people.

A volatile security situation and community mistrust have hampered efforts to control the epidemic in eastern Congo. Ebola treatment centers have come under repeated attack, leaving government officials to staff clinics in Butembo and Katwa.

International aid organizations stopped their work in those two communities because of the violence. A Cameroonian epidemiologist was killed last month during an assault on a hospital in Butembo.

Insecurity has become a “major impediment” to controlling the outbreak, Michael Ryan, the World Health Organization’s health emergencies chief, told reporters in Geneva earlier Friday.

He said 119 attacks have been recorded since January, 42 of them directed at health facilities, while 85 health workers have been wounded or killed.

“Every time we have managed to regain control over the virus and contain its spread, we have suffered major, major security events,” Ryan said.

More than 109,000 people have received an experimental but effective Ebola vaccine. Ryan said authorities are looking at introducing another one.