Kinshasa (AFP) - UN health chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Friday visited the Democratic Republic of Congo, where authorities are struggling to contain the spread of a deadly Ebola outbreak.

Uganda confirmed two new cases but, in some rare good news, a patient in the DRC was confirmed to have recovered – a first since the outbreak was detected in mid-May.

World Health Organization (WHO) head Tedros, who arrived in Kinshasa late on Thursday, had been due to travel Friday to Ituri, the remote northeastern province at the epicentre of the country’s 17th outbreak of the highly contagious haemorrhagic fever, but the trip has been pushed back by a day.

There have been at least 1,077 suspected cases of Ebola since the outbreak was declared on May 15, including 246 deaths, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said on Thursday.

But the true reach of the outbreak, which is thought to have been circulating before it was detected, is likely to be much wider, the WHO has warned.

The DRC, impoverished and wracked by three decades of conflict in the east, has limited capacity to conduct laboratory tests to confirm cases.

The virus is already present in three provinces and in neighbouring Uganda, where nine confirmed infections, including one death, have been recorded.

- Ugandan cases -

Uganda’s health ministry said Friday that two new cases were detected in Congolese nationals. One had been isolated with Ebola symptoms, while the other was a contact of a previously confirmed case.

“All contacts of this new confirmed case have been identified and are under close follow up,” the ministry said.

Uganda closed its border with the DRC this week and ordered a 21-day quarantine for anyone arriving from that country.

“That thing can be stopped,” Tedros said of the Ebola outbreak on his arrival on Thursday after assuring the Congolese people in a message on X: “I want you to know that you are not alone.”

On Friday, the WHO announced that a patient had recovered on Wednesday, left hospital and was discharged into the community after two negative tests.

WHO’s Anais Legand told reporters in Geneva it marked the “first” among patients who had been confirmed Ebola carriers in the current outbreak.

Ebola, which is passed on through close contact and bodily fluids, has killed more than 15,000 people in Africa over the past 50 years.

The deadliest outbreak in the DRC claimed nearly 2,300 lives out of 3,500 cases between 2018 and 2020.

Congolese Health Minister Samuel Roger Kamba said Thursday that 105 people were in treatment centres.

“We need to put the alarmist outcries into perspective,” he told reporters in Bunia, the Ituri provincial capital.

“We’re not in the situation that people think we are in internationally,” he said, adding: “We cannot be told that the epidemic is out of control.”

- ‘Packed like sardines’ -

State services are largely lacking in Ituri province, where access is hindered by insecurity due to the presence of Islamic State-affiliated ADF militants and other militias that regularly kill civilians.

The nearby North and South Kivu and South Kivu provinces, that have also seen Ebola cases in the outbreak, have been plagued by near continuous violence for three decades.

Swathes of the regions are controlled by the Rwanda-backed armed group M23 which has been battling government forces.

Millions of people have fled the fighting and are living in displacement camps with poor hygiene conditions.

Nearly a million of those displaced are in Ituri province, where the prospect of the epidemic spreading throughout the camps has sparked alarm.

“If Ebola comes, we’ll be wiped out as we’re packed like sardines,” Dorcas Mapenzi said at the Kingonze camp on the outskirts of Bunia.

Deborah Nzale, a widow and head of her family, lives with nine people in a small tarpaulin shelter of barely three square metres (32 square feet).

“We sleep piled on top of each other, with everyone’s sweat,” Nzale said.

“If a single person gets infected here in this camp, everyone will die.”

No vaccine or specific treatment exists for the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, which is behind the current outbreak.

But the head of the CDC Africa said on Thursday that a vaccine should be ready by the end of the year.

The WHO said says its advisory groups had recommended clinical trials for vaccines and treatments that could be useful against the Bundibugyo strain.

Uganda and Rwanda have closed their borders with the DRC and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio vowed this week to keep Ebola out of the United States.