Deadly measles in DRC

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the measles outbreak occurring in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to be the world’s largest and fastest-moving on Nov. 21. 

According to WHO’s numbers, at least 250,000 people in the DRC had been infected in 2019 by the time of the declaration, resulting in almost 5,000 deaths. It has spread to every province in the country. Through November, the number of deaths from measles in the country in 2019 alone was more than twice the overall number of people killed by ebola in the DRC since an outbreak began there in September 2018.