That Did Not Take Long: Ebola Outbreak Spreads to a City

As we saw in the last Ebola scare, the fear of a worldwide pandemic will continue to take over the news cycle. Let’s see how the vaccine developed for the last outbreak will be factored in.

David DeGerolamo

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ “We Now Have Urban Ebola” In Congo, WHO Warns Of “Potentially Explosive Increase” In Cases

The BBC reports that Health Minister Oly Ilunga Kalenga confirmed a case in Mbandaka, a city of a million people about 130km (80 miles) from the area where the first cases were confirmed earlier this month.

The city is a major transportation hub with routes to the capital Kinshasa.

Forty-four people have been infected and 23 people are known to have died.

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Senior World Health Organization (WHO) official Peter Salama said the spread to Mbandaka meant there was the potential for an “explosive increase” in cases.

“This is a major development in the outbreak,” he told the BBC. “We have urban Ebola, which is a very different animal from rural Ebola. The potential for an explosive increase in cases is now there.”

Mr Salama, the WHO’s deputy director-general for emergency preparedness and response, said Mbandaka’s location on the Congo river, widely used for transportation, raised the prospect of Ebola spreading to surrounding countries such as Congo-Brazzaville and the Central African Republic as well as downstream to Kinshasa, a city of 10 million people.

“This puts a whole different lens on this outbreak and gives us increased urgency to move very quickly into Mbandaka to stop this new first sign of transmission,” he said.

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