KINSHASA, June 15 (Xinhua) -- The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo remains in an active and upward phase, with health authorities racing to expand treatment capacity, improve contact tracing and win the trust of local communities, a health official has said.
"We are still in the midst of the epidemic. I would say we are in the upward phase of the outbreak, the active phase," Dieudonne Mwamba Kazadi, head of the National Institute of Public Health (INSP), told Xinhua in Bunia, the capital of the eastern province of Ituri, the epicenter of the outbreak.
As of Saturday, the number of confirmed Ebola cases has risen to 782, including 178 deaths. A total of 359 patients were in isolation or hospitalized, while 40 patients had recovered, according to the report published Sunday by the INSP.
The outbreak, caused by the Bundibugyo Ebola virus, was declared on May 15. It has mainly hit Ituri, while cases have also been reported in North Kivu and South Kivu provinces.
According to Kazadi, the response is moving "on the right track" despite major challenges in community engagement, treatment capacity and safe burials.
"We must continue engaging communities further," he said. "All our interventions must be carried out with the community."
Kazadi warned that more confirmed cases are expected in the coming days as the outbreak remains active. Existing Ebola treatment centers are already under pressure, making it urgent to increase capacity and position new centers in affected areas, he noted.
"The perspective is really to increase capacity and already have treatment centers positioned to receive the future suspected and confirmed cases that we will identify in the coming days and weeks," Kazadi said.
He revealed that 20 health zones have been affected in Ituri Province. Around nine Ebola treatment centers have been installed in about six health zones, which combined account for roughly 90 percent of Ituri's cases.
"We are positioning new Ebola treatment centers in all these other zones, because the newly affected zones may still have only one or two cases," he said.
Kazadi said control of the outbreak would depend above all on surveillance and contact tracing. "Once we follow all our contacts, and all new cases come from contacts being followed and are isolated, then we can be sure we are on the path toward controlling the epidemic," he said.
Kazadi said the outbreak would only be considered over after 42 days with no new cases following the discharge of the last recovered patient or the most recent confirmed Ebola-related death.
Meanwhile, Kazadi said that some communities still do not believe Ebola exists, with rumors and misinformation spreading since the start of the outbreak.
"Some communities did not believe it was Ebola. They thought it was witchcraft or a mystical phenomenon," he said, adding that such perceptions have made safe and dignified burials especially difficult.
Kazadi said authorities would involve families more directly in safe burial procedures, allowing at least one family or community member to witness the process so that relatives do not suspect manipulation or concealment.
"In the management of an Ebola outbreak, we cannot allow corpses to be transported from one place to another for burial, especially from one health zone to another," he said. "These are risky practices that really spread the disease."
At Bunia Airport, where flights have been disrupted by the outbreak, Kazadi said response teams and the International Organization for Migration had carried out several assessments, with the latest report showing that about 98 percent of required preventive measures have been put in place.
"We are sufficiently ready," Kazadi said, adding that the decision to reopen or close the airport lies with civil aviation authorities and other relevant agencies, rather than the Ebola response team. ■
