JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
More than 10,000 people have been infected in the current Ebola outbreak, and about half of those people have died. In less than six months, it's become the second largest and fastest spreading Ebola outbreak ever. The vast majority of those cases are in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but recent cases in Kenya, as well as Nigeria, highlight how hard it is to contain the spread. NPR global health correspondent Jonathan Lambert is with us now. Hey there.
JONATHAN LAMBERT, BYLINE: Hi, Juana.
SUMMERS: So, Jon (ph), tell us, just how did this outbreak get so big?
LAMBERT: Well, it's been spreading really fast. For some context, the biggest outbreak ever was the West Africa outbreak in 2014. Eventually, almost 30,000 people got sick in that outbreak. At this point in that outbreak, about 5 1/2 months in, only something like 4,000 people were infected. So this outbreak is already more than double that, and it spans a much bigger area.
SUMMERS: OK, got it. And what do we know about why it's spreading so fast?
LAMBERT: So partly because the virus had a bit of a head start. While the outbreak was declared in mid-May, it was likely spreading in something like February, but officials didn't know. That's partly because the kind of Ebola that's spreading is rare and wasn't getting picked up in those initial tests. And U.S. foreign aid cuts may have also delayed that initial detection since the cuts interrupted some routine surveillance activities. So the response was behind from the start. This is also just a really hard region to work in. It's very remote. Roads can get washed out. And there's a lot of ongoing conflict. All of that worried Nahid Bhadelia, an infectious disease physician at Boston University who's worked on Ebola responses in the past.
NAHID BHADELIA: The writing was on the wall that this would be a hard road and it would need international cooperation, it would need rapid response.
SUMMERS: And that international cooperation and rapid response, did that happen?
LAMBERT: Not quite as robustly or rapidly as many on the ground would have liked. In the 2014 West Africa outbreak, for instance, the U.S. took a major leading role. There was a White House Ebola czar. More than 3,000 U.S. personnel were sent to the region.
SUMMERS: Right.
LAMBERT: This time, the international response has been a little more muted. Countries have pledged funds, including the U.S., which has pledged over 800 million. But a decade or so ago, in that 2014 outbreak, around this stage, the U.S. had pledged billions. Here's Katie Thomas-Canfield, interim Ebola response director for the International Rescue Committee.
KATIE THOMAS-CANFIELD: I think the degree of international solidarity has been a lot less. The scale of financing that's available for this response is really a fraction of what it was in our previous response.
SUMMERS: Jon, what can you tell us about what's happening on the ground right now?
LAMBERT: So health officials in DRC have done a lot. Testing is better, and there are now more than 2,000 beds in treatment centers around the country. But too many people aren't seeking treatment in these centers. Most of the deaths are happening outside of them in the community. And that means that a lot of transmition is happening under the radar.
SUMMERS: Do we know why people aren't seeking treatment?
LAMBERT: There's a lot of mistrust of responders in these communities, many of which have been historically neglected. So people see teams coming in all decked out in personal protective gear and taking their loved ones away if they're sick, and they question their motives. Of course, these teams are just trying to contain the spread of the virus and treat patients. But building that trust and getting buy-in is hard work, and it takes time.
SUMMERS: Yeah.
LAMBERT: In places where this work has been happening for months, it's starting to pay off, and you're seeing a decline or at least a plateau in cases. But the virus is popping up in new areas where teams have to start from scratch, and that means that the case count keeps climbing.
SUMMERS: What is it going to take to turn the tide here?
LAMBERT: Vaccines and treatments are in the works, since there weren't any for the kind of Ebola that's spreading, but they're likely far from being used widely. And something that many people on the ground have told me is that even if new vaccines or treatments come, they aren't enough. They need to be coupled with trust, and there's still a lot of work to be done on building that trust.
SUMMERS: NPR's Jonathan Lambert. Thank you.
LAMBERT: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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