The World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday said there is an alarming spike in the number of Ebola cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo after militants attacked several health worker camps in the country, reported Reuters.
Twenty-seven Ebola cases were confirmed in North Kivu and Ituri provinces in the week through Dec. 10, against an average of seven reported in the last three weeks, WHO said. There has been an almost 300% increase in cases in the last three weeks, with 17 of 27 linked to a single chain of transmission.
Violence in the eastern regions of the DRC is believed to have severely disrupted the Ebola response. Last month, militia fighters killed four people and wounded several in attacks on two Ebola response centers.
In one of the attacks on an Ebola facility in Biakato, a vaccination officer and two drivers were killed. A police officer was killed in another attack in Mangina. The World Health Organization and Doctors Without Borders had to pullout locally-employed Ebola workers in Biakato after the deadly attacks.
“Insecurity is one of the main challenges that we are facing because it prevents us (from reaching) the communities to protect them against Ebola,” said Dr. Michel Yao, WHO incident manager.
Yao said that health authorities are using a helicopter as an air bridge to ferry epidemiologists and vaccinators to insecure areas and bring them back the same day. He revealed that over 20 people from the stricken Biakato mine area were vaccinated on Thursday.
“When we cannot access the community, we cannot perform surveillance activities [or] vaccination that has been one of the key innovations that really help us stop the spread out of this country to others,” Yao said.
According to the WHO figures, there have been 3,340 Ebola cases including 2,210 deaths in the world’s second-largest epidemic that was declared in August 2018.
