The Ebola outbreak declared in mid-May in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has transformed into the deadliest recorded in the country, after surpassing the threshold of 2,300 deaths and leaving behind the toll of the previous major Ebola outbreak, recorded between 2018 and 2020.
According to the figures released by the National Institute of Public Health, the total number of deceased rises to 2,325 and 4,945 infections have been confirmed, thus surpassing the deadliest outbreak documented between 2018 and 2020, when 2,299 people lost their lives due to the disease.
This is the seventeenth outbreak identified in a country with a population close to 112 million inhabitants. The only larger-scale episode took place in West Africa, where more than 28,500 infections were reported and 11,310 people died in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone between 2014 and 2016.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned about the extreme severity of the current scenario and expresses its fear that the crisis will reach unprecedented dimensions. The outbreak --of the Bundibugyo strain, for which there is still no approved vaccine-- was declared on May 15 and has remained focused since then in the northern province of Ituri.
This province is among the most violent areas of the African continent, a context that has further complicated the health response and the work of medical personnel, contributing to the virus's fatality rate increasing at such a rapid pace.