The World Health Organization (WHO) revealed on Monday that a rapidly spreading Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has caused 220 suspected de@ths, as health officials struggle to catch up with the epidemic.
While 101 confirmed cases and 10 confirmed de@ths have been recorded, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the true scale is far larger. “There are now more than 900 suspected cases and 220 suspected de@ths,” Tedros said at the Virtual Ministerial Briefing on the Bundibugyo Ebola Outbreak on Monday.
The outbreak, declared as a public health emergency of international concern on May 17, has also spread to Uganda, which has five confirmed cases and one death.
Tedros highlighted a critical challenge: the delay in detecting the outbreak means that health teams are now playing catch-up with a very fast-moving epidemic.”We are urgently scaling up operations, but at the moment, the epidemic is outpacing us,” he said.
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