Africa CDC warns DR Congo Ebola outbreak could become the worst on record
The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has reached 837 confirmed cases and 196 deaths, with 19 cases and two deaths recorded in neighboring Uganda, Al Jazeera reported . Africa CDC Director-General Jean Kaseya warned that “if we don’t stop the outbreak very soon, it will be worse than what we had in West Africa,” noting more than 26,000 potentially exposed people remain untraced.
The response is badly underfunded — less than a fifth of a $518 million goal has been raised — and is hampered by too few treatment centers, community resistance to hygiene measures, and unsafe traditional burials that drive transmission. No approved vaccine is available, and the WHO estimates roughly nine months until one is ready. The 2014–2016 West Africa epidemic killed more than 11,000 people; reaching that scale would mark a serious failure of an early-stage containment effort, which is why Kaseya’s framing is a plea for faster funding and tracing now rather than a forecast.