“Ebola thrives on delay, fear and hunger“, said Carl Skau, Acting Executive Director of the World Food Program (WFP). “Stopping this outbreak requires all hands on deck and local communities at the center.”
The Ebola outbreak was declared in eastern DRC on May 15 and is the fastest growing on record. Full-blown Ebola caused by the Bundibugyo virus is characterized by severe bleeding and a mortality rate of about 40 percent.
What you need to know
- This is the largest Ebola outbreak caused by the Bundibugyo virus to date, according to the latest update from the World Health Organization (WHO)
- 48 health zones in five provinces of eastern DRC are affected: Ituri, North Kivu, South Kivu, Tshopo and Haut-Uele
- Ituri, the epicenter of the outbreak, remains one of the country’s most severe hunger hotspots, with 1.9 million people facing crisis levels of food insecurity or worse.
- More than 2.65 million people in the 48 Ebola-affected health zones face acute food insecurity, including more than 628,000 people in emergency situations, according to the UN-backed global monitor Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC)
‘Food is frontline Ebola containment’
The UN’s World Food Program (WFP) issued a stark warning that food aid and logistics are essential to contain the outbreak.
“Food aid is frontline Ebola containment,” Mr Skau said. “It helps families stay at home, supports safe isolation, builds trust in communities and keeps health teams working. We know what works. What we need now is the speed and resources to scale it before this outbreak outpaces the response.”
Such efforts also help reduce the movement of people in search of food, support safe isolation, lower the risk of harmful coping strategies and create the social conditions for health actors to operate safely and effectively, the agency said.
What does the UN do?
The UN is actively helping authorities respond to the outbreak, including through its food agency, the WHO, and its children’s fund, UNICEF.
Here are highlights from some WFP efforts in the DRC:
- Since the beginning of the outbreak, the agency’s UN Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS) has operated 495 flights, transported 3,395 humanitarian rescue crews and delivered 56 metric tons of essential cargo to frontline locations, including recently affected provinces such as Haut-Uele and Tshopo
- WFP has delivered more than 160,000 hot meals to patients, contacts and frontline workers in 17 treatment and isolation centers
- WFP has also provided dry food rations to 23,000 people in North Kivu, South Kivu and Ituri, including 14,000 people in quarantine with monthly food aid
- A further 36,000 people in Ebola-affected zones have been reached with general food aid
Challenges ahead
Speed and resources are the main challenges, and each delay gives Ebola more room to spread, while gaps in logistics, food aid and community support risk weakening containment efforts, according to WFP.
At the same time, insecurity, access restrictions, community unrest and limited operational capacity in newly affected areas continue to complicate monitoring, supply movements and scale-up of efforts.
To sustain all operations in the DRC for the next six months, WFP requires $293.6 million, which includes funding for emergency logistics and food aid in Ituri and other affected areas.
Learn more about the UN’s Ebola response here.
Look now
Watch the daily midday news briefing at UN headquarters in New York, where WFP’s Mr Skau and UN Senior Ebola Coordinator Julien Harneis share the latest updates on the response efforts on the ground via video conference from Bunia, DRC, and answer questions from the press:
