The Congolese biomedical institute (L’Institut National de Recherche Biomédicale (INRB) has assured the country that the Ebola epidemic won’t exceed 1000 confirmed cases.
Professor Jean-Jacques Muyembe, the Director General of the INRB told journalists in the capital Kinshasa, that the ongoing Ebola outbreak is within limits of a normal epidemic.
“Ebola epidemic in the DRC remains “a normal epidemic, like any other”, with a “relatively low” mortality rate and a number of cases that falls within the trajectory of previous epidemics,” Muyembe said.
The Director General of the INRB specified that of the 900 suspected cases recorded since the beginning of the epidemic, approximately 290 have been confirmed in the laboratory, the only figures on which, according to him, the analysis should be based.
Cases that have not been tested but show epidemiological links with confirmed cases are classified as probable cases. “When we talk about Ebola, we are talking about confirmed cases, not suspected cases,” he insisted.
Based on this assessment, Professor Muyembe estimated that the epidemic would not exceed one thousand confirmed cases. “We might reach three hundred, four hundred cases, but not one thousand,” he stated, adding that a retrospective analysis could reveal that the epidemic began earlier than the officially recorded date, which would further qualify its apparent progression. Regarding the duration of the epidemic, “I’m not a prophet,
but seeing what’s happening on the ground, I think that if the surveillance pillar is strengthened, contact tracing is implemented so that we know exactly how this disease is transmitted, and confirmed cases are isolated, along with those who are sick and those who are suspected of having the disease. With the experience we have, we can contain this epidemic within two or three months.”
