Image: fernandozhiminaicela/PixabayThe University of the Western Cape’s South African National Bioinformatics Institute (SANBI) is playing a pivotal role in the continent’s response to a newly confirmed Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
UWC Extraordinary Professor, Placide Mbala, a citizen of the DRC who works for the INRB at the University of Kinshasha, is a member of SANBI, which is at the centre of the response to the outbreak. SANBI is contributing advanced genomic analysis and digital surveillance tools to help track and contain the spread of the virus.
The outbreak - confirmed in Kasai province - has already claimed 15 lives, with 28 suspected cases reported across Bulape and Mweka health zones. The index case, a 34-year-old pregnant woman, presented with high fever and vomiting. Subsequent testing identified the Zaire strain of Ebola virus, known for its high fatality rate and rapid transmission.
SANBI’s involvement ensures that cutting-edge bioinformatics and genomic sequencing are part of the response - strengthening Africa’s capacity to understand viral evolution and transmission patterns in real time.
UWC’s contribution is further reflected in the work of Professor Mbala, whose leadership in outbreak detection and genomic surveillance has earned global recognition. Read more about his impact in TIME100 Health.
The latest genomic analysis suggests this outbreak may be a new zoonotic spillover event from an unknown reservoir host, rather than a continuation of previous outbreaks. For technical details and sequencing insights, see the full report on Virological.org.
For more details, visit Africa CDC’s official announcement.
This marks the DRC’s 16th Ebola outbreak and the first in Kasai since 2008. Africa CDC has deployed emergency teams to support contact tracing, laboratory diagnostics and infection control.
A staff member from UWC’s National Bioinformatics Institute is part of the team that identified and confirmed the new Ebola outbreak in the DRC.
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Thursday this week confirmed that it has confirmed the 16th outbreak of the Ebola Virus in the country.
This follows an alert raised by local health authorities in late August, with patients showing symptoms like haemorrhagic fever in facilities in the country’s Kasai Province. The World Health Organisation Regional Office for Africa (WHO AFRO) has reported 28 suspected cases and 15 deaths, including four health workers.
The outbreak was confirmed by a team from the DRC’s National Institute of Biomedical Research (INRB) in Kinsasha. This includes Dr Placide Mbala, an associate professor based at the University of Kinsasha, as well as a professor with the South African National Bioinformatics Institute at the University of the Western Cape (UWC).
The INRB team had worked with swabs and blood specimens from six suspected cases, confirming the clinical diagnosis of the outbreak. The researchers also completed a whole genome sequence of the Ebola virus within one hour. Whole genome sequencing (WGS) reveals the complete order of nucleotides, the organic molecules described as the fundamental building blocks of DNA and RNA. This allows scientists to spot genetic variants from previous outbreaks, and helps monitor the spread of the disease.
In the case of the latest outbreak, the INRB team was able to show that the new outbreak has a nucleotide similarity of 99.52%, or is most closely related, to the virus responsible for the 1976 Yambuku-Mayinga outbreak.
This, said the INRB, suggests that this case represents a new zoonotic spillover event – meaning that the virus was passed on from animals to humans – and is not directly related to either the nearby 2007 Luebo or 2008/2009 Mweka Ebola outbreaks.
As yet, the reservoir host has not yet been identified. A reservoir host is the organism, typically an animal, that harbours the disease-causing pathogen. The pathogen can sit in the host indefinitely, with the animal not presenting with any of the symptoms of the disease that can infect other organisms, like humans.
