Suspected Ebola cases reported in rebel-held DRC area

Suspected cases of Ebola have been reported in a rebel-held part of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) South Kivu province, hundreds of kilometres from the outbreak’s epicentre, officials said on Thursday.

If confirmed, cases in South Kivu would signal a worrying expansion of an outbreak experts believe circulated for about two months in Ituri province, several hundred kilometres to the north, before being detected last week.

The World Health Organization (WHO) at the weekend declared the outbreak of the Bundibugyo strain, for which there is no vaccine, a public health emergency of international concern.

The outbreak has been linked to 139 deaths and there were 600 suspected cases in eastern DRC’s Ituri and North Kivu provinces by Wednesday, according to the WHO. Two cases have also been confirmed in neighbouring Uganda.

Two suspected cases have been detected in South Kivu, regional health spokesperson Claude Bahizire told Reuters.

One died in Lwiro territory while the other is in isolation awaiting test results, he said.

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Another local official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the patient who died had recently come from Ituri.

Lwiro is controlled by the M23 rebel group, which seized control of large swathes of eastern DRC last year. An Ebola case was confirmed last week in M23-held Goma, the capital of neighbouring North Kivu province.

M23, backed by neighbouring Rwanda, said earlier this week it was committed to working with international partners to contain the outbreak.

The response has been complicated by the presence of the virus in densely populated urban areas and widespread armed violence in eastern DRC.

A 2018-2020 outbreak in the region of the Zaire strain of Ebola was the second-deadliest on record, killing nearly 2,300 people.

This time, first responders said they lack basic supplies, which some have attributed to foreign aid cuts by major international donors.