The end of the deadliest Ebola outbreak ever in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is in sight. Health organization WHO reports on Tuesday that the last Ebola patient has been released from the hospital and that no new infections have been detected for two weeks.
The outbreak, designated by the WHO in July as an international health crisis, is officially over if no new infections are detected in 42 consecutive days.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus speaks of “very good news for the whole world”, but the organization emphasizes that the outbreak is not over yet. In eastern Congo, where many rebel groups are fighting each other, it is difficult to trace new cases of infection.
The rebels made it more difficult to fight against the further spread of the highly contagious disease, which is transmitted via body fluids such as blood, sweat and urine. The current outbreak was also due to the fact that there was a lot of misinformation about ebola, which meant that social workers were mistrusted by the population.
Since the outbreak in August 2018, 2,264 people have died from Ebola. Nearly twelve hundred others survived. Only the outbreak in West Africa from 2013 to 2016 was more deadly. Then more than eleven thousand people died.
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