An unusual outbreak of Ebola in Africa is in danger of spiraling out of control. Officials at the World Health Organization provided the latest update on the outbreak Monday. There have now been nearly 1,000 confirmed or suspected cases, along with more than 200 connected deaths. The true toll of the outbreak is likely substantially higher, however, and the situation is only expected to worsen in the immediate future. “[T]he delay in detecting the outbreak means that we are now playing catch-up with a very fast-moving epidemic,” said World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at a briefing Monday. “We are urgently scaling up operations, but at the moment, the epidemic is outpacing us.” The tip of the iceberg On May 16, the WHO declared a public health emergency of international concern over the outbreak. The majority of these cases have occurred in the DRC, but there have been several imported cases identified in the bordering country of Uganda.
Ebola is a zoonotic disease, meaning outbreaks usually begin when a person is exposed to infected animals (African fruit bats are thought to be a primary reservoir). It can then spread from human-to-human through contact with infected bodily fluids.
