Health workers wearing protective equipment cross into a restricted area outside an isolation unit at the General Referral Hospital of Mongbwalu during Ebola prevention and response activities on 26 May in Mongbwalu, Democratic Republic of Congo.

• The WHO Director-General has warned that with 220 suspected deaths and over 900 suspected cases identified in the DRC, the epidemic is spreading faster than relief efforts can contain it.
• The WHO has declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern, with the Bundibugyo strain being particularly concerning as no approved vaccine or treatment currently exists.
• Hospitals and treatment centres have been stormed and burned by local residents angry over restrictions on traditional burial practices.

The director-general of the World Health Organisation (WHO) says there have been 220 suspected deaths in the current Ebola outbreak and that a delay in detecting cases meant responders are now “playing catch-up”.

“We are urgently scaling up operations, ‌but at the moment the epidemic is outpacing us,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Monday, adding that countries bordering the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) should take immediate action.

Earlier on Monday, Uganda reported two more Ebola cases, taking its total number of confirmed cases to seven.

In a post on social media on Sunday, the WHO chief said that as surveillance efforts have been scaled up in the DRC’s Ebola response, more than 900 suspected cases have been identified so far.

Ebola is a viral disease that spreads through direct contact with bodily fluids. It can cause severe bleeding and organ failure, leading to death.

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The epicentre of the latest outbreak is in the DRC’s northeastern province of Ituri, and it has also spread into the neighbouring provinces, as far as 200km away from “ground zero”, as well as beyond the country’s borders, to Uganda.

No vaccine or treatment exists for the new Bundibugyo strain of Ebola.

Last week, the WHO declared the outbreak of the rare Bundibugyo strain of Ebola a public health emergency of international concern, and fear has gripped the streets of cities in the DRC and Uganda.

Meanwhile, in Uganda, health authorities said they had detected two more confirmed cases of Ebola on Monday, bringing the total number of cases reported in the country to seven.

The two new cases are health workers in a private health facility in the capital, Kampala, and both are Ugandans, the Ministry of Health said in a statement.

Hospital stormed in DRC

On Sunday evening, angry young men stormed a hospital treating Ebola patients in the eastern DRC, forcing the medical staff to scramble to evacuate the patients as gunfire rang out in the area.

It was not immediately known if anyone was hurt in the attack on the Mongbwalu General Hospital, but Richard Lokudu, the hospital’s medical director, told The Associated Press news agency the attackers demanded that two bodies of their kin be handed over to them.

There was gunfire, and the medics were trying to evacuate the patients and the staff, Lokudu said over the phone.

He added:

He did not have any further details of the unfolding turmoil.

On Saturday, a group of residents of Mongbwalu, located in Ituri province, set fire to a tent set up for suspected and confirmed Ebola cases by the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) humanitarian group. During that attack, 18 people with suspected Ebola infections left the facility and were unaccounted for, Lokudu then said.

Last Thursday, a treatment centre in the town of Rwampara was also burned down after family members were banned from retrieving the body of a local man suspected to have died of Ebola.

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Congolese authorities have mandated that the dangerous work of burying suspected victims be managed by authorities wherever possible, which can be met with protests from families and friends.

Last Friday, the government said funeral wakes and gatherings of more than 50 people would be banned in the northeastern DRC in an effort to curb the spread of the virus.