WHO Raises Ebola Public Health Risk to 'Very High' in DR Congo

The WHO's Risk Assessment Upgrade

The World Health Organization (WHO) has upgraded the public health risk of the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo from high to “very high” as the deadly outbreak continues to spread.

Ebola Outbreak Details

WHO chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, announced on Friday that they were revising their risk assessment for the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, to “very high at the national level, high at the regional level, and low at global level.”

Tedros also said on X that the situation in the DRC was “deeply worrisome”.

“So far, 82 cases have been confirmed, with seven confirmed deaths. But we know the epidemic in the DRC is much larger. There are now almost 750 suspected cases and 177 suspected deaths,” he wrote.

Public Health Measures

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said on Friday that volunteers are going door-to-door in the area at the centre of ⁠the outbreak, to combat misinformation about Ebola and explain how people can protect themselves and seek care.

In an official order on Friday, Ituri’s provincial government restricted funerals, saying burials must now be conducted only by specialised teams and prohibited the transport of dead bodies by non-medical vehicles.

The Impact of the Outbreak

The world should not underestimate the risk posed by this ⁠Ebola outbreak, Mohamed Yakub Janabi, the ⁠WHO regional director for Africa, told the Reuters news agency on Friday.

“It would be a big mistake to underestimate it, especially with a virus with this strain, Bundibugyo, [for] which we don’t have the vaccine,” Janabi said, adding that the outbreak in DRC has had relatively little global attention compared with this month’s hantavirus outbreak, which affected cruise ship passengers from 23 countries, including wealthy Western nations.

The Future Outlook

The WHO director of health emergency alert and response operations, Abdirahman Mahamud, also said on Friday that the potential for this virus to spread rapidly was “high, very high, and that changed the whole dynamic”.

The strain of Ebola was also documented in Uganda, but Tedros said that the situation there was “currently stable”, after one death linked to a case from DRC was reported.