By Ruth Faden, Ruth Karron, and Carleigh Krubiner
Days after the Democratic Republic of the Congo declared an end to a deadly Ebola outbreak in the western province of Équateur, a new one emerged in North Kivu province. With the number of cases and death toll rising rapidly, the country’s ministry of health, the World Health Organization, and partners are working to launch a rapid and effective response that includes the use of an experimental vaccine. But their decision not to vaccinate women who are pregnant or lactating unfairly deprives them of the protection they deserve against this deadly disease.
The latest outbreak is due to the Zaire strain of the Ebola virus, a highly lethal variant that was responsible for more than 11,000 deaths in the 2013-2016 epidemic in West Africa and which killed 60 percent of those infected in the recent initial DRC outbreak. The new Ebola eruption has the potential to be even more lethal, as the North Kivu Province is the site of an ongoing armed conflict that makes medical treatment far more difficult to provide.
Fortunately, an experimental vaccine called rVSV-ZEBOV has been shown to be highly effective against this strain of Ebola virus. The DRC’s ministry of health, along with WHO and partners, has already begun employing the vaccine using the highly successful ring vaccination strategy, in which contacts and contacts-of-contacts of people with Ebola are offered the vaccine to halt the spread of the disease.
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