Perhaps most disturbing is the speed at which people are dying. UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher warned that the epidemic was killing someone approximately every 30 minutes.
This is no longer simply a health crisis in one of Africa’s most fragile countries. It is a test of how prepared the continent is to respond when an infectious disease moves faster than the systems designed to contain it.
An outbreak moving at extraordinary speed
The scale of the current epidemic becomes clearer when compared with Ebola’s most infamous outbreak.
During the 2014 to 2016 West African epidemic, it took almost five months for the death toll to reach 1,000. In the DRC, the current outbreak has reached more than twice that number in roughly three months.
Researchers believe the virus may have been circulating undetected since February, meaning the official figures could still underestimate the true scale of transmission.
The outbreak has now reached six of the DRC’s 26 provinces.
That matters because the DRC is not an isolated country. It sits at the centre of a highly connected region, sharing borders with nine countries. People move across those borders for trade, work, family and refuge. The more difficult it becomes to identify infections inside the DRC, the harder it becomes for neighbouring countries to prevent imported cases.
Uganda has already confirmed 20 cases, while cases have also been treated in Germany and France.
So far, international spread remains limited. But the experience of previous epidemics shows why early containment matters.
The vaccine problem changes everything
One of the most worrying aspects of this outbreak is that the virus belongs to the Bundibugyo species of Ebola, a particularly rare strain.
There have only been two previously known Bundibugyo outbreaks, and unlike the Zaire species responsible for earlier major epidemics, there is currently no approved vaccine specifically available for this strain.
That leaves healthcare workers operating with fewer tools at precisely the moment they need them most.
There is, however, a potential breakthrough on the horizon. Britain’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency has authorised human trials of a Bundibugyo vaccine being developed by Oxford University researchers. The vaccine uses technology similar to that behind the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.
Three other research groups are also developing vaccines.
That scientific response is encouraging, but it also highlights an uncomfortable reality: Africa cannot afford to wait for an outbreak to become catastrophic before developing the tools needed to fight it.
Why Africa should be paying attention
The DRC has experienced 17 Ebola outbreaks since the virus was first identified there 50 years ago. Yet repeated exposure has not eliminated the structural problems that make outbreaks difficult to control.
Conflict, displacement, poverty, weak healthcare infrastructure and population movement all complicate disease surveillance. In communities where people already struggle to access basic healthcare, convincing them to report symptoms or isolate can be extremely difficult.
This is why Ebola is about more than medicine.
A country can have the expertise to treat Ebola but still struggle to contain it if health workers are not paid, laboratories cannot process tests quickly, communities distrust authorities or patients cannot safely reach treatment centres.
The DRC’s experience should therefore be viewed as a continental warning.
Africa’s population is increasingly mobile. Trade between countries is expanding under the African Continental Free Trade Area, cities are growing rapidly and regional transport networks are becoming more connected. Those developments are economically positive, but they also mean infectious diseases can travel through the same networks that carry people and goods.
Africa cannot keep responding after the crisis begins
The WHO hopes to bring transmission under control within three months. Importantly, that does not mean ending the outbreak completely. It means slowing transmission enough to regain control.
Whether that happens will depend on far more than the DRC alone.
Neighbouring countries need stronger surveillance. African governments need reliable emergency health systems. Research institutions need funding to develop vaccines for diseases that may not be commercially attractive until thousands of people are already infected.
And communities need to be treated as partners rather than simply recipients of public health instructions.
The Ebola crisis also reinforces a lesson Africa learned during COVID-19: health security is economic security.
An uncontrolled outbreak can disrupt trade, close businesses, overwhelm hospitals, increase government spending and discourage travel and investment. The cost of preparedness is significant, but the cost of allowing an epidemic to run unchecked can be far greater.
The DRC is once again on the frontline of an infectious disease crisis. But the outcome will matter to the whole continent.
The question is no longer whether Africa will experience another major outbreak. It will.
The real question is whether, when the next one comes, Africa will be ready before the virus gets ahead of it.
*Dr Iqbal Survé
Past chairman of the BRICS Business Council and co-chairman of the BRICS Media Forum and the BRNN
*Sesona Mdlokovana
Associate at BRICS+ Consulting Group
Africa Specialist
**The Views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of Independent Media or IOL.
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