The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has continued to worsen, with confirmed cases exceeding 9,000 and more than 4,300 deaths recorded. Health authorities are struggling to contain the epidemic, which has spread across seven provinces, as response teams battle to slow transmission in multiple hotspots. The World Health Organization says a major concern is the high number of deaths occurring within communities rather than in treatment centres, suggesting that many patients are not being identified before their condition deteriorates. The WHO’s incident manager in the DR Congo, Dr Catherine Swallwood, said about 60 per cent of the total deaths had occurred in communities. She added that approximately one-third of new cases recorded in recent weeks involved community deaths, indicating that patients were not being detected while still alive. Swallwood said the WHO was shifting its focus towards remote communities and hard-to-reach health zones to improve case detection and access to medical services. She stressed that response teams needed to establish services in the communities most affected by the outbreak, where people were falling ill and dying without timely intervention.