‘Likely to get worse before it gets better’: WHO chief’s warning about Africa’s ebola outbreak

The authorities are playing catch-up as the ebola virus outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda has far outpaced the response, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has warned.

At an online meeting of the African Union, Ghebreyesus said a delay in detecting ebola cases meant the authorities were now “playing catch-up” and the epidemic was likely to get worse before it gets better.

Tedros said containing the ongoing outbreak was complicated by the fact that the DRC’s Ituri and North Kivu provinces were highly insecure and there were no approved vaccines for the Bundibugyo virus, the species of ebola driving the outbreak.

The DRC and Uganda have reported more than 900 suspected cases and over 200 deaths. The WHO has declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern, but stressed that it does not have the potential to cause a pandemic.

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As Firstpost’s Madhur Sharma previously noted, the ebola outbreak worsened as initial tests were conducted for the more common Zaire species of the virus. After the strain-specific test returned negative, the authorities were falsely convinced it was not ebola, which meant the virus circulated silently across the region before it was finally detected. This silent spread gave the virus a head start of weeks.

Virologist Emma Thomson told Sharma in an interview that the spiralling outbreak has laid bare flaws in the global approach to public health.

“We tend to build tools around the best-known outbreak pathogens, but rarer viruses such as Bundibugyo virus can still cause severe disease and international spread. Sustained investment in high-containment laboratories, diagnostic development, genomic surveillance, vaccine platforms, therapeutics, and international research partnerships is essential. These capacities cannot be assembled at speed once an outbreak is already moving,” said Thomson, Director of the Centre for Virus Research, University of Glasgow.