Cholera kills 1,800 in DR Congo as Ebola rages and conflict blocks aid

Cholera has killed roughly 1,800 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo this year, the World Health Organization said Wednesday, as the country simultaneously fights the deadliest Ebola outbreak ever recorded. Around 60,000 cases of the diarrheal disease have been logged, a toll WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called the country's worst cholera outbreak in decades.

The virus has hit hardest in the eastern provinces of North and South Kivu, where a patchwork of armed groups operates and parts of the territory sit under the control of the Rwanda-backed M23 militia. That's the same region where Ebola is burning through communities, and the overlap is stretching responders thin.

Tedros warned the outbreak is now tracking the Congo River basin, a path that could carry it all the way to Kinshasa, a densely packed capital of millions on the river's banks. The rainy season is adding fuel, giving the waterborne disease more chances to spread.

The mortality rate sits around 3%, which WHO flags as high for cholera — a disease that is treatable when patients can reach care quickly. Remote, conflict-riddled zones are exactly where that access breaks down, and the agency says those areas now face a rampant cholera surge stacked on top of a raging Ebola epidemic.

Tedros pressed the case for rolling out Ebola vaccines, calling the campaign especially important in the conflict-hit east, where reaching people is the hardest part of the job. According to the WHO, the coming weeks will test whether responders can outrun two outbreaks at once.