The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a statement on Friday that attributed 246 suspected infections and 65 deaths to a new Ebola outbreak in the remote Ituri province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
Africa CDC said it was convening an emergency meeting with health officials from the DRC, Uganda, South Sudan, and other global partners to coordinate a response to the outbreak, including cross-border surveillance of the possible spread of the deadly disease.
The statement said most of the infections to date have been reported from two areas within the Ituri province, Mongwalu and Rwampara. Four of the reported fatalities have been laboratory-confirmed Ebola cases.
“Suspected cases have also been reported in Bunia, pending confirmation,” the statement added. Bunia is the capital city of Ituri province, a fast-growing commercial hub with a population of almost 700,000 people.
“Africa CDC is concerned about the risk of further spread due to the urban context of Bunia and Rwampara, intense population movement, mining-related mobility in Mongwalu,” the statement said.
Preliminary testing at the National Institute of Biomedical Research (INRB, using its French acronym) in the national capital of Kinshasa found Ebola in 13 out of 20 samples that were tested. Laboratory results for the suspected cases in Bunia were still pending as of Friday morning.
The INRB is attempting to identify the exact strain of Ebola involved in the outbreak. The most common strain in the Congo is Ebola Zaire, which has an effective vaccine. According to the World Health Organization (W.H.O.), the DRC had an inventory of about 2,000 doses of the vaccine as of last year.
In addition to population movement, political instability is a major challenge. Ituri province has been under martial law since 2021 due to an active insurgency involving dozens of armed groups, including the ISIS-linked Allied Democratic Forces (ADF).
Last month, attacks by a militia coalition called the Cooperative for the Development of the Congo (CODECO) against several Ituri villages killed over 70 people. DRC officials said the area remained so dangerous that they could not retrieve all of the bodies for burial.
The new Ituri outbreak is the 17th outbreak of Ebola in the Congo since the disease was first identified in 1976. The worst outbreak to date ran from 2018 to 2020 and killed over 1,000 people. A broader outbreak across West Africa from 2014 to 2016 killed over 11,000 people.