Kinshasa, Aug 19 (IANS) Children account for about one-third of reported deaths in the ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), despite representing only around one-fifth of confirmed cases, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said Wednesday in its latest situation report.
According to UNICEF, children aged 17 and below account for approximately 21 per cent of confirmed cases but 33 per cent of reported deaths, pointing to a “concerning upward trend” in the mortality burden among children, calling for continued attention to appropriate pediatric care.
UNICEF warned that treatment services remain under pressure. Service delivery has been affected by delayed referrals, overcrowding, limited critical care and pediatric capacity, resource constraints and gaps in data reporting, according to the agency.
UNICEF said community surveillance and contact tracing still need to be accelerated, calling for stronger early detection, timely referral and pediatric care as transmission continues, Xinhua news agency reported.
As of Sunday, the DRC had reported 5,021 confirmed cases across 55 health zones in six provinces, with a case fatality rate of 47.4 percent, according to the latest report released by the WHO Regional Office for Africa on Tuesday.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has said that the Ebola outbreak in the DRC remains a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), as the epidemic surpasses 5,000 cases, spreads into new areas and prompts authorities to pursue experimental vaccines and treatments.
The outbreak is now the second-largest Ebola outbreak ever recorded and is spreading faster than all previous ones, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at an emergency committee meeting.
The epidemic, caused by the Bundibugyo ebolavirus, has surpassed the 2018-2020 Ebola outbreak in eastern DRC, previously the country’s deadliest. The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said Monday that the current outbreak is killing roughly one person every 30 minutes and risks becoming the deadliest Ebola epidemic ever recorded globally if its trajectory is not urgently reversed.
“We must be frank: the epidemic is far from being under control,” Tedros said. “It had a big head start, and we are still playing catch-up.”
During the first 95 days of reporting, the seven-day moving average rose to more than 90 confirmed cases a day, substantially higher than at the same stage of the 2014-2016 West Africa epidemic and the DRC’s 2018-2020 outbreak, according to a WHO situation report.
The eastern province of Ituri remains the epicentre, accounting for 84.8 per cent of cumulative cases, but infections are accelerating in neighbouring provinces. The WHO warned that high mortality, deaths outside treatment facilities, a growing surveillance workload and uneven response capacity indicate that current measures are not sufficient to interrupt transmission.
–IANS
/as
