The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) will send experts to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to assist in tackling the ongoing Ebola outbreak, it announced on Monday.
At the request of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the European experts will first travel to the Africa CDC headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where they will help coordinate efforts to combat the disease.
The ECDC will also assess the need to deploy its experts to areas near the DRC and Uganda. If deemed necessary, decisions will be made regarding specific locations.
As of Saturday, the DRC’s Ituri province had 246 suspected cases of Ebola and 80 suspected deaths, according to the ECDC. Two individuals who had travelled from the DRC to Uganda were also infected, and one of them died.
The ECDC cautions that significant uncertainties remain regarding the scale of the outbreak, which may be larger than currently estimated.
Efforts to coordinate the response are complicated by insecurity in the affected areas.
