UN officials urge stronger Ebola response in DR Congo as outbreak outpaces efforts

UNITED NATIONS, July 29 (Xinhua) -- Two senior UN officials on Wednesday called on the international community to significantly scale up the Ebola response in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) as the spread of the epidemic is outpacing the response.

Julien Harneis, the UN senior Ebola coordinator, and Carl Skau, acting executive director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), made the appeal in a virtual press briefing from Bunia, the capital city of the DRC's Ituri province, the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak.

"In the last 24 hours, 50 people have died of Ebola in the Congo. And the number of cases is growing exponentially, doubling every 20 days. This is a far faster growth than the growth in our response. And so the gap between the epidemic and our response is widening," said Harneis.

Skau said the Ebola outbreak in the DRC is the fastest-growing Ebola crisis ever. "To make a comparison, in the past two months, 1,000 people have died (in DRC). That took 8 months for 1,000 people to die in West Africa."

The officials called for a massive ramp-up of the response.

The long-running conflict in the eastern DRC has driven nearly 10 million people into crisis or emergency levels of food insecurity, with Ituri -- the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak -- among the hardest-hit areas, where nearly 2 million people need food assistance, Skau said.

"The response must urgently scale up, with more funding, supplies, medical teams and access to reach those in need," Harneis said, calling on member states to keep their borders open so that Ebola response personnel can travel to the country, supplies can be delivered quickly and freely, and staff leaving the country are able to return home.

The UN officials also highlighted the urgent need for funding.

The UN humanitarian response plan for the DRC requires 2.1 billion U.S. dollars but is only 45 percent funded, Harneis said. Skau said the WFP requires 76 million U.S. dollars for the Ebola response in the DRC over the next six months, adding that the funding covers only logistics, not food. ■