Missing Ebola patients in Congo raise fears of uncontrolled spread

Nearly 300 Ebola-positive patients are unaccounted for in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Health workers cannot locate confirmed cases, and officials lose sight of who has been exposed, who needs treatment and where transmission may be spreading next.

By June 25, Congo had 1,155 confirmed cases and 304 confirmed deaths, with 385 patients hospitalized in isolation. Earlier World Health Organization updates had already tracked a steep rise, from 515 confirmed cases and 91 deaths in Congo on June 6 to 896 confirmed cases and 232 deaths by June 17. The outbreak has also reached Uganda, where WHO recorded 19 confirmed cases, two deaths and one probable fatality.

WHO first flagged the outbreak on May 5 after a high-mortality illness was reported in Mongbwalu Health Zone in Ituri Province, including deaths among health workers. Laboratory testing on May 14 confirmed Bundibugyo virus, a strain of Ebola disease. Congo is now confronting its 17th Ebola outbreak since the virus was first identified in 1976, and the current outbreak has spread across 25 health zones in Congo and one district in Uganda.

Africa CDC identified 6,403 contacts for follow-up on June 8, but that tracking effort is undermined if hundreds of confirmed cases cannot be found. The outbreak is unfolding amid humanitarian crisis, insecurity, remote and densely populated terrain, and heavy population and trade movements, conditions that make routine surveillance and rapid isolation far more difficult.

A doctor who had just returned to France from Congo tested positive for Ebola.

At a June 17 emergency meeting convened by Burundi’s president and African Union chairperson Évariste Ndayishimiye, the African Union, WHO, Africa CDC and partners pledged $910 million for the Ebola Bundibugyo response in Congo and Uganda, including $80 million from African member states. There is no vaccine or specific treatment for the Bundibugyo species involved, although candidates are being tested.