The death toll from the latest Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has surpassed 2,000 people, deepening a humanitarian crisis that infectious disease experts say remains difficult to control. However, they emphasize that the average American faces very little domestic risk.

Published government data shows 4,381 confirmed cases as the virus spreads across parts of eastern and northeastern DRC. Earlier cases also crossed the border into Uganda.

David Wohl, M.D., a professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, described the scale of the communities confronting the outbreak. "There's a lot of people who live there. So this is not breaking out in a town of 50, but in rural cities of hundreds of thousands," he told Fox News Digital.

Wohl said the outbreak is advancing at a pace that stands apart from previous crises. "The slope is just so catastrophic, with more and more people getting infected at a very significant pace without much slowing down."

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Efforts to contain transmission face what Wohl described as a "perfect storm" of difficult conditions. Dense populations and limited access can interfere with medical care, contact tracking and quarantine protocols.

Conflict in and around affected areas creates another major obstacle for those attempting to respond. "There's conflict in and around these areas, which makes getting in and out of them … really tough," Wohl said.

Despite the rising death toll in Africa, Wohl said Ebola is not a major threat to most people in the United States. Transmission requires close physical contact with bodily fluids from someone who is severely ill or deceased.

"This is not something that I think the average person has to worry about acquiring here in the United States," Wohl said. He also stressed, "It doesn’t travel across the air and across a room."

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The 2014 West Africa outbreak infected more than 28,000 people, according to Wohl. Even during that crisis, only four Ebola cases were diagnosed in the United States.

Two of those cases were imported, while two nurses contracted the virus when caring for an infected patient in Dallas, according to the CDC. Several other patients who were infected and diagnosed overseas were medically evacuated to the United States for treatment.

Wohl pointed to differences in healthcare, hygiene, access and public health capacity when explaining the limited domestic threat. "We just have so much better public health , healthcare systems, hygiene, access," Wohl said. "It's a very different environment."

Other viruses present more immediate public health concerns for Americans, according to Wohl. He identified measles, influenza, RSV and SARS CoV 2 among those concerns.

"The average person who gets a headache or a fever does not need to worry about Ebola," the doctor said. Potential concerns for the United States instead include healthcare providers who travel to Africa to help with containment and the possibility of further instability in the region.

The current outbreak involves the Bundibugyo ebolavirus strain, which Wohl said is genetically different from the Zaire strain involved in the 2014 crisis. Treatments and vaccines were successfully deployed against the Zaire strain during that outbreak.

However, approved Ebola therapeutics are not approved for disease associated with Bundibugyo virus. Their effectiveness against the strain has not been established.

Researchers are actively evaluating new treatments and vaccine candidates for Bundibugyo virus, according to Wohl. Emerging technologies, including mRNA platforms, could potentially allow researchers to develop vaccines more rapidly against specific viral threats.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continue monitoring the affected region. Wohl said international assistance and the deployment of resources remain critical to bringing the surge under control.

"This is a fire that’s raging that continues to be out of control," Wohl said. He added, "There’s lots of people suffering ... and I think more can be done."