The number of confirmed Ebola deaths in the Democratic Republic of Congo has reached 2,011, health authorities said, quoted by Reuters and the Associated Press, BTA reports.
According to data from the Institute of Public Health, a total of 4,381 confirmed cases of the virus have been registered in five provinces in the country. Currently, 704 infected people are hospitalized and isolated.
The epidemic was officially declared on May 15, but in an extremely short period the number of victims has increased sharply. While the first 1,000 deaths were recorded within nine weeks, another 1,000 people died in the next three weeks alone.
According to rescue teams, humanitarian aid is failing to reach remote and hard-to-reach areas of the country quickly enough, further complicating the fight against the outbreak.
The current outbreak is unlike any other in terms of its scale and speed of spread. An additional problem is that there are still no approved vaccines or specific treatments for the rare Bundibujo strain.
The World Health Organization has said the outbreak likely began in February, months before authorities detected the first cases in one of the most remote and vulnerable areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The international humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) warned that the situation in the east of the country was “more critical than ever“ and called for international aid to be stepped up.
The virus was first identified in 1976 near the Ebola River in DR Congo. The current outbreak is the 17th in the country and, according to the Associated Press, the largest the country has ever faced.