The World Health Organisation (WHO) on Tuesday said it needed an additional 5,000 health workers to help contain the Ebola outbreak spreading across the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The outbreak, officially detected on May 15, has spread to six provinces in the country’s conflict-affected eastern and northeastern regions.
The WHO, citing official Congolese figures, said more than 6,600 people had been confirmed infected, while 3,175 had died since the outbreak began.
The development has put further pressure on health facilities in the affected areas, many of which are already struggling with shortages of medical personnel and other essential resources.
Ebola is a highly contagious viral disease transmitted through contact with the bodily fluids of infected persons. It can cause severe bleeding, organ failure and death.
The UN health agency said it was working to establish 3,000 beds in Ebola treatment centres across the affected areas to cope with the rising number of patients.
A senior technical official with the WHO, Luca Fontana, said the expansion would require thousands of additional healthcare workers.
“More than 900 beds have been built within the first two months of the response, and we have now reached close to 1,400 beds across 59 treatment centres,” Fontana told a press briefing in Geneva.
He said another 1,600 beds would be required to meet the rapidly increasing demand.
“Despite this extraordinary effort, we estimate that another 1,600 beds will be required to meet the rapidly growing needs,” he said.
Fontana said nearly 4,000 healthcare workers were currently working in the treatment centres, adding that 5,000 more were urgently needed.
He said the Congolese Ministry of Health was racing against time to identify qualified medical personnel from other parts of the country for deployment to the affected provinces.
“The problem is to identify those fast enough to make sure that we can cover the growing need,” Fontana said.
He stressed that fully staffed treatment centres would be critical to saving lives and bringing the outbreak under control.
“Every treatment centre that is fully staffed and functional means more life saved and a stronger chance of bringing this outbreak under control,” he said.
The current outbreak is caused by the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, for which there is currently no approved vaccine or treatment. Several vaccines and treatments, however, are being tested.
The outbreak has also been complicated by the security situation in the affected regions, where government presence is weak, healthcare infrastructure is limited and armed groups have operated for decades.
Fontana said the geographical spread of patients seeking treatment was another indication that the outbreak was expanding.
He explained that while most patients initially admitted to treatment centres came from Bunia, the capital of Ituri Province, infected people were now arriving from villages “far beyond” the original epicentre.
He described the development as “a clear sign” that the outbreak was spreading and said the WHO response would have to adapt accordingly.
Ebola has killed more than 15,000 people in Africa over the past 50 years.
The previous major Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which lasted from 2018 to 2020, killed nearly 2,300 people out of about 3,500 reported infections.
