The head of the World Health Organization warned on Friday that Ebola virus infections in the Democratic Republic of Congo are escalating quickly and now pose a “very high” risk to the Central African country.
At least 177 people are believed to have died from the outbreak in Congo while the number of suspected cases has climbed to nearly 750, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters in Geneva.
"But we know the epidemic in DRC is much larger," he said, as not all cases in the country are recorded and reported.
The figures have risen sharply. The WHO had said on Wednesday that more than 130 suspected deaths had been recorded with nearly 600 suspected cases.
Given the "rapidly" growing number of infections in Congo, the WHO is "revising our risk assessment to very high at the national level, high at the regional level, and low at the global level."
The WHO had previously assessed the risk as “high” at both the national level in Congo and the regional level, with a “low” risk assessment globally.
Tedros said the situation in neighbouring Uganda is "stable," with two cases confirmed in people had travelled across the border from Congo. One of them died.
According to the African health authority Africa CDC, the crisis began in the Congo's north-eastern province of Ituri, which borders Uganda and South Sudan. This is the 17th recorded Ebola outbreak in the Congo since 1976.
The current spread of the rare Bundibugyo strain of the virus, for which there is neither a vaccine nor a treatment, makes the situation particularly difficult.
Ebola is a contagious and life-threatening infectious disease that is transmitted through physical contact and contact with bodily fluids.
In 2014 and 2015, more than 11,000 people died during an Ebola epidemic in West Africa.
