Bombay Durpun - WHO chief in capital of Ebola-hit DR Congo

World Health Organization (WHO) head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus arrived in the capital, Kinsasha, late Thursday, two weeks after the outbreak of the highly contagious haemorrhagic fever was declared.

He had been due to travel Friday to Ituri, a remote northeastern province that is the epicentre of the country's 17th Ebola outbreak, but the trip has been pushed back by a day.

There have been at least 1,077 suspected cases since the outbreak was declared on May 15, including 246 deaths, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said Thursday.

But the true reach of the outbreak, which is thought to have been circulating before it was detected, is likely much wider, the WHO has warned.

The DRC has limited capacity to conduct laboratory tests to confirm the transmission of cases.

Congolese and international health authorities have struggled to curb the spread of the virus, which is already present in three provinces and in neighbouring Uganda, where seven confirmed infections, including one death, have been recorded.

The DRC, a vast nation of more than 100 million people, is one of the poorest countries in the world and for more than three decades has been plagued by conflict from myriad armed groups in its mineral-rich east.

Ebola, which is passed on through close contact and bodily fluids, has killed more than 15,000 people in Africa over the past 50 years.

The deadliest outbreak in the DRC claimed nearly 2,300 lives out of 3,500 cases between 2018 and 2020.

"That thing can be stopped," Tedros said on his arrival Thursday after assuring the Congolese people earlier in a message on X: "I want you to know that you are not alone."

- 'Packed like sardines' -

State services are largely lacking in Ituri province, where access is hindered by insecurity due to the presence of Islamic State-affiliated ADF militants and other community-based militias that regularly kill civilians.

Ituri neighbours both North Kivu and South Kivu provinces, both of which have also seen Ebola cases in the latest outbreak and have been plagued by near continuous violence for three decades.

Swathes of the two regions are under the control of the Rwanda-backed anti-government armed group M23, which re-emerged in late 2021 but stepped up its campaign early last year.

Millions of people have fled the fighting and are living cheek-by-jowl in displacement camps, under tarps and tents and with poor hygiene conditions.

Nearly a million of those displaced are in Ituri province, where the prospect of the epidemic spreading throughout the camps has sparked alarm.

"If Ebola comes, we'll be wiped out as we're packed like sardines," Dorcas Mapenzi said at the Kingonze camp on the outskirts of Bunia, the provincial capital.

Deborah Nzale, a widow and head of the family, lives with nine people in a small tarpaulin shelter of barely three square metres (32 square feet).

"We sleep piled on top of each other, with everyone's sweat," Nzale said.

"If a single person gets infected here in this camp, everyone will die."

No vaccine or specific treatment exists for the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, which is behind the current outbreak.

But the head of the CDC Africa said Thursday that a vaccine should be ready by the end of the year.

Uganda and Rwanda have closed their borders with the DRC and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio vowed this week to keep Ebola out of the United States.

G.Tara--BD