A senior World Health Organization official said on Friday that 75 medics in the Democratic Republic of Congo had been infected with Ebola and 17 of them had died since the current outbreak started there.
Ebola was thought to be circulating months before the outbreak was first declared by Congolese officials on May 15, meaning many medics were exposed to the disease before they even knew it was present.
Even now, health officials say supplies of the basic gear to protect themselves like gloves and masks are running short.
"It is a really high price that the system, the healthcare system, is paying, because we don't have enough of healthcare workers in DRC," a WHO emergency director, Marie Roseline Belizaire, told a press conference by video link from eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
The WHO warned that the outbreak is spreading rapidly despite accelerating efforts to tackle the virus.
It said it was still racing to catch up with the worsening situation gripping the northeastern DRC.
"The outbreak remains serious" and is "evolving so fast", said Marie-Roseline Belizaire, the WHO Africa emergencies chief.
‘Response growing stronger’
"However, I have seen a response that is growing stronger every day," she told reporters in Geneva, speaking from Bunia, the capital of the DRC's Ituri province, the outbreak's epicentre.
The outbreak was declared on May 15, though transmission had been going undetected for some time beforehand.
It is caused by the rare Bundibugyo strain of the virus, for which there is no vaccine or specific treatment.
There have been 896 confirmed cases so far in the DRC, including 232 confirmed deaths, with 21 new cases in the last 24 hours, according to the latest WHO update.
More than 90 percent of known cases in the DRC have been in conflict-wracked Ituri.
The outbreak has also spread to North Kivu and South Kivu provinces.
Chinese team
Belizaire said a Chinese medical team had arrived in the capital Kinshasa and would be heading to Bunia.
In neighbouring Uganda, the only other country hit, there have been 19 confirmed cases including two deaths, and 10 recovered patients.
Uganda has reported no new cases for 12 days.
Meanwhile the UN migration agency said it had done more than a million health screenings at borders and on travel corridors as part of surveillance measures aimed at detecting potential cases.
