As Ebola resurfaces in DR Congo, so do critical questions about how to respond
“It’s going to be a real race against time.”
A large-scale response has begun to an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that went undetected for up to two months and has already become one of the largest on record, with 671 suspected cases and 160 suspected deaths.
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Still, he said local health facilities have the capacity to deal with the situation “thanks to the experience gained during previous Ebola outbreaks and the COVID-19 pandemic”.
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“When interventions are managed exclusively from the central level and rely mainly on external teams, they do not strengthen the local system,” he said. “On the contrary, they create a dependency that becomes problematic as soon as these actors disperse.”
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The second major concern is how to manage the outbreak without a licensed vaccine and approved treatments — key tools that have significantly improved responses to other Ebola strains.
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Still, responders will be relying for now on core public health measures to break transmission, such as early case detection, isolation, contact tracing, and safe burials. These measures have controlled many previous outbreaks in DRC.
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