In Europe, flights to and from the region remain unaffected, with planes from Congo capital Kinshasa landing daily in Brussels. Meanwhile the bloc has so far accepted two U.S. citizens from the region: a doctor with confirmed Ebola is receiving treatment in a Berlin hospital, while a contact of an Ebola case is being taken to a clinic in Czech capital Prague. Rubio and the U.S. embassy in Czechia expressed their thanks.
There have been almost 600 suspected cases and 139 suspected deaths in the outbreak so far, Tedros said. “We know the scale of the epidemic in the DRC is much larger,” he added.
As a disease, Ebola is caused by a group of viruses — in this case the rarer Bundibugyo virus for which there are no vaccines or treatments. Infection initially causes flu-like symptoms, followed by vomiting, diarrhea and bleeding from the nose or in a victim’s feces.
The WHO is investigating when and where the outbreak began but estimates it started “a couple of months ago,” according to WHO emergencies expert Anaïs Legand. The agency supported Congo as soon as the first warning signs were reported, she said.
Tedros added that any delays in detection were due to the growing intensity of the conflict in Congo in the past two months, the mass displacement of people, and the rare viral strain that is causing the current outbreak, which meant it wasn’t detected by testing for the more common Ebola Zaire strain. Typhoid and malaria, which cause the same early symptoms as Bundibugyo, are also endemic in the areas affected.
Armand Sprecher, an epidemiologist and ebola expert at humanitarian NGO Doctors Without Borders, told POLITICO that conflict complicates outbreak responses because regions damaged by violence tend to distrust outsiders. “It’s not easy to step into some place and start telling people what to do,” he said.