GENEVA: “Dangerous gaps” remain in efforts to rein in an Ebola outbreak that has killed more than 180 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Doctors Without Borders warned Monday.
Despite a massive scale-up in the response to the deadly outbreak declared in the vast central African country on May 15, the medical charity, which goes by its French acronym MSF, said the true scale of the crisis remained unclear.
“One month on, the Ebola disease outbreak is outpacing the response effort,” Kate White, MSF’s emergency medical coordinator in the DRC, said in a statement.
“No-one knows the true scale or exactly where the disease is spreading,” she said.
“What we do know is that most treatment centers in Ituri province are overwhelmed; many of our patients arrive at a late stage of the disease, and the majority were never identified or monitored as contacts before seeking care.”
