The Ebola outbreak affecting the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda has expanded to 32 health zones with 894 confirmed cases and 204 deaths, while contact tracing capacity remains critically below the levels required to contain the spread, with only approximately 6,000 contacts identified out of the 17,000 to 35,000 that should be monitored daily at current case volumes.
Acting Head of Emergency Preparedness and Response at the Africa Centre for Disease Control, Wessam Mankoula, presenting the figures at a webinar, said Uganda’s situation had remained relatively contained with 19 confirmed cases and 2 deaths, all linked to a single health zone in Kampala where all known contacts had been identified. He said the DRC’s Ituri Province was driving the bulk of the caseload and accounted for approximately 78 percent of all fatalities recorded in the country.
Mankoula said case numbers had increased 38 percent in the most recent reporting period, with the number of affected health zones growing from a handful at the outbreak’s declaration on May 15 to 11 by late May and 32 by the fourth reporting week. He said the contact tracing deficit was the most critical operational problem, with only around 4,000 contacts being actively followed against a required monitoring capacity of between 17,000 and 35,000. Only 7 of the 49 required burial teams were active, alongside 7 of the 98 necessary vehicles and 84 of the 540 personnel needed for ground operations.
He noted that without approved vaccines or specific treatments for the Sudan strain of Ebola, containment depended almost entirely on early detection, thorough contact tracing, and consistent community-level monitoring, making the current shortfalls in all three areas particularly alarming.
