Congo’s government has declared a new outbreak of Ebola in the country’s rural north-west, after two cases of the deadly virus were confirmed.
Congo’s health ministry said that, of the five samples sent to the National Institute of Biological Research in Kinshasa, two came back positive for the Zaire strain of Ebola in Bikoro in Equateur Province.
New #Ebola outbreak declared in Democratic Republic of the CongoThe #DRC?? MoH informed WHO that two out of five samples collected from five patients tested positive for #Ebola Virus Disease. More specimens are being collected for testing. https://t.co/L7BKAdRYT2 pic.twitter.com/aNCq4MIxyt
— WHO African Region (@WHOAFRO) May 8, 2018
The samples were gathered after the Equateur Province Health Ministry notified Kinshasa on May 3 of some 21 cases of a heamorrhagic fever in the Ikoko Impenge area, including 17 deaths, according to the World Health Organisation and Congo’s government. The haemorrhagic fever could be different from Ebola.
A team was sent by the World Health Organisation and Doctors Without Borders over the weekend to investigate and strengthen coordination. The five new cases were then identified and sent to the laboratory, Congo’s government said.
Since that time, no deaths have been reported among those hospitalised or among health workers treating the ill, it said.
? Press release: New #Ebola outbreak declared in the Democratic Republic of the Congo #DRC?? https://t.co/pZyGxYFpjg pic.twitter.com/90vvaVjCaQ
— WHO (@WHO) May 8, 2018
A team of experts will go to Bikoro on Wednesday to implement measures to avoid further spread of the disease, said the ministry statement. The team will also investigate how the outbreak first started, it said.
This is the ninth Ebola outbreak in Congo since 1976, when the deadly disease was first identified. The most recent outbreak was in May 2017 that killed four of the eight people infected in Congo’s Bas-Uele province in the north-east. That outbreak was declared over in July 2017.
