Ebola vaccine reaches epicentre of Congo outbreak

Kinshasa: Limited access and required funding are the key challenges facing health officials trying to respond to the latest Ebola outbreak in southern Congo, the World Health Organisation said on Friday.

It is the first Ebola outbreak in 18 years in Kasai province, a remote part of Congo with poor road networks, which is more than 1,000 kilometres from the nation’s capital of Kinshasa.

A United Nations peacekeeping helicopter was used to help deliver 400 vaccine doses to the epicentre, in the locality of Bulape, on Friday, Patrick Otim, WHO’s programme area manager, said at a briefing in Geneva. An additional 1,500 doses will be sent from the capital of Kinshasa, he said.

“We have struggled in the last seven days with access but are collaborating with MONUSCO (UN peacekeeping mission in Congo) now,” Otim said. While the WHO and Congolese authorities have “ramped up efforts to have a full scale response” on the ground, “we need to be able to pay for the operations,” he added.

Since the outbreak was confirmed on September 4, the number of suspected cases has increased from 28 to 68, Africa’s top health agency said on Thursday. The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, or Africa CDC, has so far reported 16 deaths.

Otim said the most recent confirmed case was located 70 kilometres from the current epicentre. “Our worry is if we get cases in the other health zone, we need to expand and it will be resource-intensive,” he said. WHO’s projected cost for the current outbreak over the next three months is USD 20 million while Congo’s national response plan is estimated at USD 78 million,

said Otim.agencies