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The regional government of Ituri region, which is the source of the outbreak, has banned public gatherings to prevent the spread of the virus.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has increased the risk to public health Ebola explosion in the Democratic Republic of the Congo from high to “very high” as the deadly epidemic continues to spread.
The head of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, announced on Friday that he was reviewing his assessment of the risk of Ebola in Bundibugyo, to “be the highest globally, the highest in the region, and the lowest globally.”
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Tedros also said on X that what is happening in the DRC is “very worrying”.
“So far, 82 cases have been confirmed, and seven people have died. But we know that the epidemic in the DRC is very serious. There are now about 750 suspected cases and 177 deaths,” he wrote.
He added that WHO staff had been sent to the epicenter of the DRC’s Ituri region, to help the affected people.
The new version of the virus is currently not approved vaccine or treatment, and the WHO declared this a global emergency on Sunday.
Ebola is a virus that causes fever, body aches, vomiting and diarrhea. It is spread through direct contact with bodily fluids.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said on Friday that volunteers are going door-to-door in the area at the center of the outbreak, to combat misconceptions about Ebola and explain how people can protect themselves and seek care.
“Social action remains mixed. For some people the epidemic is real and they are learning more about how to protect themselves,” Gabriela Arenas, IFRC Africa Region Coordinator, told reporters via video from Nairobi. “For some, there is still skepticism and false claims that Ebola is a myth.”
Public health measures
Reporting from eastern Congo’s Goma, in the neighboring region of North Kivu, Al Jazeera’s Alain Uaykani said authorities are “taking steps” to combat the outbreak as the situation escalates.
In a decree on Friday, the Ituri regional government banned burials, saying burials should only be carried out by special teams and prohibiting the transport of corpses by non-medical vehicles.
It also limited public gatherings to more than 50 people and suspended local sports leagues.
This has come a day after residents of Rwampara district in Ituri district set fire to an Ebola treatment center and clashed with the police when they tried to retrieve the body of a person who was injured in the accident on Thursday.
“The way things are going in Ituri, they are afraid that more cases will spread because most of the cases that have been reported in the whole region are from Ituri,” said Uaykani.
The world should not underestimate the threat posed by this Ebola epidemic, Mohamed Yakub Janabi, the WHO’s Africa director, told Reuters on Friday.
“It would be a big mistake to ignore it, especially with this virus, Bundibugyo, (for which) we don’t have a vaccine,” Janabi said, adding that the outbreak in the DRC was not the focus of the world compared to this month’s hantavirus outbreak, which affected ship passengers from 23 wealthy countries, including wealthy Western countries.
“You only need one problem to put us all at risk, so my wish and my prayer is that we should give proper attention to (Ebola),” he said.
Also, the head of WHO’s emergency management and response, Abdirahman Mahamud, said on Friday that the potential of the virus to spread rapidly was “high, very high, and changed all the forces”.
The Ebola crisis was also recorded in Uganda, but Tedros said the situation was “stable”, after one death linked to a case from the DRC.
Tedros added that a US citizen working in the DRC tested positive for Ebola and was transferred to Germany for treatment, and there was “an American national, who is at high risk, who was transferred to the Czech Republic”.
