The Africa Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) has called for enhanced regional preparedness and immediate release of pledged funds to avert further spread of the rapidly expanding Ebola outbreak.

Wessam Mankoula, head of the Continental Incident Management Support Team for the Ebola response at the Africa CDC, warned at an online news conference on Thursday  evening that the Bundibugyo outbreak is expanding rapidly across geographic boundaries.

“With the evolving Ebola outbreak in our continent, unfortunately, the virus keeps moving, crossing from one country to another,” said Mr Mankoula, highlighting Nigeria as the latest African country to be affected by the deadly virus.

Nigeria, on Tuesday, confirmed its first case of Ebola, involving a woman who recently arrived in the country on an international flight from Uganda.

The West African nation became the fifth country to have recorded a confirmed case, with the list also including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, France, and Kenya.

Noting that Nigeria initially listed 44 close contacts, Mr Mankoula highlighted that a number of additional contacts have been identified by the country’s health authorities, while efforts are also currently underway to identify more contacts and bring them under quarantine.

The latest data from the Africa CDC showed that confirmed cases in the ongoing Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak have reached 9,735, with more than 4,690 deaths and a case fatality rate of 48.2 per cent.

It said that some 2,614 patients have recovered from the deadly disease.

Africa CDC officials said Ebola becomes infectious only after symptoms appear, stressing the need for at-risk countries to strengthen detection, preparedness and surveillance systems.

“We need to have a strong point of entry screening, strong surveillance capacity, and also strong laboratory capacity.

“This is in addition to looking for different pillars related to strengthening the preparedness capacity in all countries that do not have Ebola at this stage,’’ said Mr Mankoula.

Africa CDC data showed that the current outbreak at week 23 has recorded 3.2 times more cases and three times more deaths than the next-highest comparator, the 2014-2016 West Africa Ebola outbreak.

Recalling a total of around 3 billion dollars in funding pledges, Mankoula noted that only 35 per cent of the pledged amount has been disbursed from the donors so far.

“Ebola outbreak will not be controlled with pledges, as long as those pledges are not disbursed and used to push actions on the ground,” he said. “While this outbreak is evolving, this is a time for the urgent release of those pledges.”

(Xinhua/NAN)