DRC's Ebola outbreak is getting worse

Your Proximities deep dive

Hello everyone,

I last wrote a deep dive on the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) just after the epidemic was formally declared in May.

At the time, there had been more than 900 suspected cases and 223 suspected deaths. I remember expressing hope in that first piece that it could be contained quickly. But that hasn’t happened and things are deteriorating.

Let’s be clear: it’s the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak on record, and through no fault of the brave medics leading the effort, the response is struggling.

A handful of excellent Western correspondents have travelled to the epicenter, but they’re an exception, and the story deserves more coverage.

A Q&A on the latest developments below. The first deep dive is more explanatory, so they might work as a pairing if you want a complete picture.

Also, on this week’s Proximities podcast, I’ll be joined by a doctor who is working on the frontlines in Ituri, the epicenter of the outbreak.

Bests,

Barry.

NB: A reminder for newer subscribers that you can access an archive of almost 40 deep dives here, most of them evergreen.

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Episode 9 of the Proximities podcast is now live on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube.

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Where does the outbreak stand now?

It’s not good. New figures yesterday showed that there have now been 3,200 confirmed cases and 1,405 of those ended in death. It should be noted, though, that experts think the true extent is even worse than that.

“The scale of the outbreak is at least two to four times the number of cases that we have found,” WHO emergencies director Chikwe Ihekweazu said last week.

Can you put those numbers in context?

The simplest way I can do that - and this is startling - is to compare it to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa from 2014 to 2016, the worst in history. More than 28,000 people were eventually infected, and a truly horrible 11,310 died.

It took eight months for the deaths back then to pass 1,000.

We’ve surpassed that milestone in just 10 weeks in DRC.