Ebola: DR Congo outbreak not slowing, MSF warns

Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Friday that "the race to contain the Ebola disease outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is far from over." 

MSF issued the comments after DRC's government and the World Health Organization (WHO) had both spoken of signs of slowing transmission in some places earlier this week, prompting some relatively upbeat headlines and coverage. 

The outbreak, which was first declared in mid-May but likely started spreading several months earlier, is the largest in DRC's national history and the fastest-spreading on record anywhere. 

MSF — which has around 1,700 staff in the DRC, most of them Congolese — warned that while the observed spread was slowing in the initial epicenter of Ituri province, the number of new cases being recorded had not fallen on a national level. 

"Assuming the outbreak is under control because some Ebola treatment centers are admitting fewer patients would be a mistake," MSF's emergency coordinator in DRC Anthony Kergosien said. 

"The outbreak is not shrinking, it is moving: South Ubangi has become the seventh affected province, while North Kivu now accounts for nearly half of all newly confirmed cases, with test positivity rising sharply in recent days," Kergosien said. 

He added that undetected chains of transmission had already taken hold in the worst-hit areas, and said "the spread of the outbreak into new areas with even weaker preparedness and response capacities poses a serious risk."