The Democratic Republic of Congo’s Ebola outbreak has claimed 170 lives, health authorities said yesterday.
Officials in the African nation warned children are dying at an unprecedented rate because of the killer virus.
Jessica Illunga, spokeswoman for the DRC’s Health Ministry, blamed treatment at traditional healing clinics for the latest spate of deaths.
She said many youngsters are being treated for an unrelated malaria outbreak only to leave the clinics with Ebola and perish within days.
In the town of Beni, which has rocked a ‘second wave’ of cases since the start of the outbreak in August, 120 cases have been confirmed.
At least 30 of these cases have struck youngsters under 10, of which 27 have died, according to the latest data from the health ministry.
Officials in the African nation warned children are dying at an unprecedented rate because of the killer Ebola virus
‘There is an abnormally high number of children who have contracted and died of Ebola in Beni,’ Ms Ilunga told Reuters.
‘Normally, in every Ebola epidemic, children are not as affected.’
This comes after officials put the DRC’s Ebola death toll at 164 just last Friday.
Nine new cases were confirmed on Saturday; seven of which were in Beni and two in the city of Butembo.
This was the biggest one day jump since the outbreak’s onset. In total, 267 cases have been recorded in the DRC’s latest epidemic.
The DRC’s outbreak, the 10th in its history, was declared on August 1 in the eastern part of North Kivu, which borders Uganda and Rwanda.
Fears of Ebola are heightened because of a devastating pandemic in western Africa in 2014 that killed more than 11,000 people.
Health workers in Zambia were being trained to deal with Ebola earlier this month amid fears it will spread from the neighbouring DRC.
Staff are learning how to recognise signs of Ebola, how to treat patients and how to stop the infection spreading in case it is transmitted by travellers.
An Ebola patient being helped by medical workers in Beni in Democratic Republic of the Congo: 170 people are confirmed to have died since the outbreak started in August
Dr Peter Salama, emergency response chief at the World Health Organization (WHO), last month warned the current Ebola outbreak would only get worse.
The combination of rebel violence and pre-election unrest is creating a ‘perfect storm’ for an even worse epidemic, he said.
Armed opposition attacks in North Kivu province have risen in recent weeks.
Refugee workers were even forced to evacuate Beni, home to around 200,000 people, due to a deadly raid that left more than a dozen locals dead.
Fears and misconceptions about the virus are also being exploited by politicians ahead of the DRC’s December election, which is causing the public to lose faith in health workers, according to Dr Salama.
Last month, Ebola was found to be responsible for the death of a woman in Butembo, which has a population of around 1.4 million.
In response, Dr Salama said ‘no-one should be sleeping well tonight around the world’.
Fears and misconceptions about the virus are also being exploited by politicians ahead of the DRC’s December election, which is causing the public to lose faith in health workers (pictured, a man demonstrates using an electronic voting machine in Beni)
A doctor is pictured caring for a patient inside an isolated cube at the Alliance for International Medical Action treatment centre in Beni
Local reports claim the unnamed woman was the mother of a known Ebola patient, who travelled from the town at the centre of the outbreak.
Experimental drugs have been shipped into the area to control the virus, which is considered to be one of the most lethal pathogens in existence.
But virologists have repeatedly warned the situation is ‘hard to control’ due to cases occurring in a conflict zone roamed by armed militias.
The WHO has admitted the latest death makes ending the outbreak in the east of the country significantly harder.
Butembo’s mayor revealed the victim was a woman, who was likely infected as a result of her participating in an unsafe burial. She died in a university clinic.
But the DRC’s ministry of health claimed it was a man from a nearby town at the centre of the outbreak, who refused to cooperate with health authorities.
‘Ebola case from Beni has died in Butembo DRC,’ Dr Salama wrote on Twitter.
An electoral official educates voters on how to use the new electronic voting machines that will be used for the upcoming election in Beni, which is currently being rocked by Ebola
A Congolese health worker administers an experimental Ebola vaccine to a boy who had been in close contact with a confirmed sufferer in Mangina, North Kivu
‘Good news is case detected quickly, response already in place and expanding. Bad new(s) is increases risk of further spread.’
He told the HuffPost: ‘When you have an Ebola case confirmed in a city with one million people, no one should be sleeping well tonight around the world.’
Dr Salama added having Ebola in urban centres, such as Butembo, makes ending the ongoing outbreak much harder.
Butembo, about 35 miles (55km) away, is around triple the size of Beni and is a major trading route for consumer goods entering the DRC.
The virus has since spread to Oicha, an area almost entirely surrounded by militants, which stoked the fears of Dr Tedros Adhanom, chief of the WHO.
He previously told Reuters: ‘If one case is hidden in the red zone or an inaccessible area, it’s dangerous. It can just spark a fire, just one case.’
The International Rescue Committee, which responds to humanitarian crises, fears the outbreak will trump the pandemic four years ago.
A spokesperson from the agency said: ‘Without a swift, concerted and efficient response, this outbreak has the potential to be the worst ever seen.’
Congolese soldiers are pictured patrolling an Ebola treatment centre in Beni in the aftermath of an attack that killed more than a dozen civilians
Ebola virus disease, caused by the virus with its namesake, kills around 50 per cent of the people it strikes, with no proven treatment being available.
The unsafe burial of a 65-year-old Ebola sufferer triggered the latest outbreak in the DRC, according to the WHO.
After she was buried members of her family began to display symptoms of the virus ‘and seven of them died’.
Genetic analysis confirmed the virus is the Zaire strain; the same as the one that was behind an outbreak in the west of the DRC earlier this summer.
However, Dr Salama has argued the newer pathogen is genetically different to previous strains.
The 2014 international response to the Ebola pandemic, which decimated West Africa, drew criticism for moving too slowly and prompted an apology from the WHO.
But international aid teams have moved much quicker in response this time, with vaccination campaigns already underway in several regions.