UN: Half of Ebola deaths in DRC occurred in last 20 days

Half of the 2,500 deaths from Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have occurred in the past 20 days, and the epidemic is growing rapidly and has already spread to an area the size of France, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.

“The epidemic is expanding exponentially. It currently covers an area larger than France. Half of the 2.5 thousand deaths have occurred in the last 20 days,” OCHA representative in the DRC Julien Harneis said at a briefing in Geneva.

He said additional resources are urgently needed to contain the epidemic. The epidemic is taking place in an area that has been mired in armed conflict for 30 years and the humanitarian needs there are “enormous,” he added.

On Thursday, the DRC's National Institute of Public Health reported that the number of confirmed cases of the Ebola virus in the country had increased to 5,208, with 2,476 people having died from the disease.