In an interview with FRANCE 24, Dr Jean Kaseya, head of the Africa CDC, said the Ebola outbreak in the DR Congo is “serious” but not “out of control”. He warned that “no one is safe” if it is not stopped at the source and argued that the West would already have a vaccine if the disease had struck there.
Speaking to FRANCE 24 from Kinshasa, Kaseya said the response to the Ebola outbreak – which has killed at least 290 people – is “massive”. The Africa CDC chief said that it was unclear whether the the outbreak has “reached the peak”, pointing to transmission in displacement camps that response teams cannot reach.
The West is ‘not interested’ in Africans
Kaseya also said that an outbreak in the West would long since have prompted a vaccine and treatment. “They didn’t because they were not interested. It’s for Africans,” he said, noting that “almost all Western countries” are now cutting aid to the continent, but said he was “not begging”.
The risk, the epidemiologist argued, is global. A French doctor who had worked in Ituri province returned home infected this week, and Kaseya warned that the virus would not wait “for other countries to be infected”. The cost of stopping it now, he said, remains “lower” than the price Western states would pay fighting it in Africa. Still, he predicted a vaccine within months – “maximum, by the end of this year”.
This story originally appeared on France24
