Five patients have recovered from infection with a rare strain of Ebola, the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) announced today during a visit to Bunia, the epicentre of the outbreak affecting the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
“Four people will be discharged today and one was discharged the day before yesterday [Friday],” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during the inauguration of a new Ebola treatment centre in Bunia, the capital of Ituri province.
The UN health chief acknowledged that treatments and vaccines for the Bundibugyo strain causing the outbreak are still under development, but stressed that this “does not mean people cannot recover from Ebola.”
On Friday, the WHO reported that one patient had recovered, marking the first documented recovery of a confirmed Bundibugyo case in the current outbreak.
Despite improved organisation of health services, the virus continues to spread faster than the authorities’ response, the medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) warned on Saturday, calling for the urgent expansion of testing, rapid deployment of health workers, and sustained access to medical supplies.
“The message we would like to share with the community in Ituri is that there is hope,” said Pierre Akilimali, incident manager at the DRC National Institute of Public Health, during the inauguration of the new treatment centre.
“With the symptomatic treatment we are currently providing, we are seeing patients recover,” he added.
The virus, which causes Ebola haemorrhagic fever, has also been detected in three provinces and in neighbouring Uganda, where two new cases were confirmed on Friday, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the East African country to nine.
The DRC has recorded 246 deaths and more than 1,000 suspected cases, according to a report released by the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the African Union’s health agency.
Ituri province accounts for the vast majority of confirmed cases. It is a region with extremely limited public services in rural areas and ongoing insecurity due to the presence of armed groups that frequently attack civilians.
