The Democratic Republic of Congo - Epidemics (DG ECHO, WHO, Authorities) (ECHO Daily Flash of 23 August 2022)

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has a very high infectious disease burden and is prone to recurrent epidemics that require emergency support and create additional humanitarian needs.

Authorities declared the resurgence of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) in Beni in North Kivu province on 22 August 2022. The patient already died. Genome sequencing has confirmed that the case represents a flare-up of the previous EVD outbreak in the area in 2018-2020. In total, there were five EVD cases (100% lethality) in the DRC so far in 2022.

The country is dealing with a number of ongoing outbreaks, including cholera (8,068 suspected cases with 122 deaths), measles (89,537 suspected cases with 1,183 deaths), monkey pox (2,660 suspected cases with 109 deaths), bubonic plague (559 suspected cases with nine deaths), yellow fever (611 suspected cases with 15 deaths), vaccine-derived polio (66 cases), typhoid fever (over 1.15 million suspected cases with 520 deaths) and more than 11.7 million malaria cases with over 7,000 deaths (reference period for all figures: 1 January to 7 August 2022). 92,542 COVID-19 cases have been confirmed since March 2020.