Latest Ebola outbreak kills 61 in DRC
Sixty-one people have died in the latest outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the authorities have said.
The health ministry’s General Directorate for Combatting Disease said 103 cases of Ebola had been recorded in the eastern DRC as of August 22, 76 of which had been confirmed by laboratory tests.
Of the 103 cases, there were 61 deaths, 34 of which been confirmed by lab tests, while 27 others were considered “probable” cases of Ebola.
The outbreak began on August 1 in Mangina in North Kivu province, and cases have been reported in neighbouring Ituri province.
It is the 10th outbreak to strike the DRC since 1976, when Ebola was first identified and named after a river in the north of the country.
The health ministry added that “four additional experimental therapeutic molecules” had been approved by its ethics committee for treating infected patients.
The outbreak in eastern DRC was declared a week after WHO and the government hailed the end of a flareup in northwestern Equateur province, at the other end of the vast country, which killed 33 people.
Ebola is a highly contagious haemorrhagic fever caused by a virus which is believed to have a natural home in species of tropical bats.
It causes serious illness including vomiting, diarrhoea and in some cases internal and external bleeding. It is often fatal.
In the worst Ebola epidemic, the disease struck the West African states of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone in 2013-15, killing more than 11,300 people.
