Two young men in a remote mining district have pushed Congo’s Ebola epidemic onto yet another map. Health authorities confirmed on Sunday that the virus has reached Nord-Ubangi, a northern province that touches the Central African Republic. Both are men in their twenties from Wapinda, close to the neighbouring province of Bas-Uele, and one has not survived.
That makes eight affected provinces since the outbreak was declared in May, and it underlines a pattern experts find worrying. Mohamed Yakub Janabi, who heads the WHO’s Africa office, says many local clusters are shrinking, yet the virus keeps turning up in new places.
The numbers are already without precedent for the country. The official tally as of Friday stood at 9,415 laboratory-confirmed cases, and almost half of those patients, 4,536 people, have died. In just one day up to 16 October, 67 new cases were logged, two thirds of them in Ituri, the eastern province that remains the centre of the epidemic.
Doctors are up against Bundibugyo, a rarer variant of the virus with no licensed shot or drug. Fighting it depends on tracing contacts, isolating patients and persuading frightened communities to cooperate. In some zones health workers now visit homes because people are afraid to go to clinics. Nord-Ubangi will test that approach: roads are poor, communications patchy, and the area has taken in thousands fleeing violence across the border.
Neighbouring authorities are tightening the screws. North Kivu plans to bar arrivals from Ituri for a week from Monday, limit motorbikes to two riders and cars to four occupants, and halt big gatherings from football matches to nightclubs and rallies. Abroad, Kenya now counts eight infections after another was confirmed on Sunday; Uganda, by contrast, is officially clear again.
