Vaccination against the Ebola virus has begun in the Bulape health zone in the central Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where an outbreak was declared earlier this month, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Sunday.
The ongoing phase of vaccination targets frontline health workers and contacts of confirmed cases, the WHO said in a statement.
An initial batch of 400 doses of the Ervebo vaccine, which protects against the Zaire ebolavirus species behind the current outbreak, has arrived in Bulape, one of the epicenters of the epidemic in Kasai Province. About 45,000 additional doses are expected to be shipped in the coming days, according to the WHO.
Containing the outbreak is possible if appropriate measures are taken within the next two weeks, WHO Program Area Manager Patrick Otim told a press briefing in Geneva on Friday. He said another 1,500 doses were available in Kinshasa, the country’s capital, and would be deployed once ultra-cold chain storage is operational.
At least 68 suspected cases have been reported, including 16 deaths, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday at an online briefing. The WHO said on Friday that 25 cases have been confirmed.
The epicenter of the outbreak is located near Tshikapa, the capital of Kasai Province, about 100 to 200 km from the Angolan border. The outbreak is currently affecting a remote rural district, though frequent population movements between Bulape and Tshikapa increase the risk of wider spread.
It is the 16th Ebola outbreak recorded in the DRC since 1976. Kasai Province previously reported Ebola outbreaks in 2007 and 2008, according to the WHO.
Epidemiological investigations are ongoing, with transmission chains and the source of infection yet to be identified. The WHO currently assesses the public health risk as high at the national level, moderate at the regional level, and low at the global level.
The DRC last declared the end of an Ebola outbreak in September 2022, after one case was confirmed in the eastern province of North Kivu. Testing showed that the case was genetically linked to the 2018-2020 outbreak in North Kivu and Ituri provinces, which killed nearly 2,300 people.
Ebola first occurred in 1976 in two simultaneous outbreaks: one was of Sudan virus disease in Nzara in what is now South Sudan, and the other was of Ebola virus disease in Yambuku, in what is now the DRC, then known as Zaire. The latter occurred in a village near the Ebola River, from which the disease takes its name, according to the WHO.
Ebola is a highly contagious hemorrhagic fever that causes a range of symptoms such as fever, vomiting, diarrhea, generalized pain, or malaise, and in many cases, internal and external bleeding.
