The deadly Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has not yet reached its peak, the Red Cross said Tuesday, warning it could take a year to halt the spread.
Since the outbreak was declared in the DRC on May 15, 808 cases have been confirmed in the country, including 192 deaths, according to the World Health Organisation.
Speaking from Bunia, the capital of Ituri — the northeastern province which is the outbreak’s epicentre — a top official from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said the crisis appeared far from over.
“Here in Bunia, what I can see is that we did not reach the peak of the epidemic,” Bruno Michon, the IFRC’s operations manager for the Ebola outbreak, told reporters in Geneva by video call.
Like a number of other organisations working on the Ebola response on the ground, he said the IFRC was concerned about a dire lack of testing capacity, warning: “it’s very difficult to know exactly to what extent the epidemic is spreading”.
