The head of Africa’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention warned that the current Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo could become the worst on record. Tens of thousands of people who came into contact with those infected have not yet been traced.
“If we don’t stop the outbreak very soon it will be worse than what we had in West Africa and eastern DRC,” Africa CDC Director-General Jean Kaseya stated during a virtual meeting of African heads of state in Burundi.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Kaseya said tens of thousands of people who may have been exposed to Ebola had not yet been traced or contacted.
“The contact tracing is a major indicator and a major issue. We are missing more than 26,000 people, and we don’t know where they are, and we don’t know if they are contaminating other people.”
The warning refers to the devastating 2014–2016 outbreak that swept through Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, killing more than 11,000 people, as well as a less deadly 2018 outbreak in Congo.
A Red Cross official said that the epidemic had not yet peaked in the country.
“We are afraid that this could last one year to end this disease,” Bruno Michon, operations manager for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said.
The response has been hampered by a lack of treatment centres and by community resistance to stringent hygiene measures. Health officials said that, more than a month since the outbreak was declared, the true scale was still unknown.