Two years after the Democratic Republic of Congo reported an Ebola case, a fresh outbreak has been reported from the northwest part of the country. The outbreak has already resulted in four deaths.
The outbreak comes in the wake of the country already battling the COVID-19 outbreak has resulted in 20 deaths. The country’s Health Minister Eteni Longondo confirmed the outbreak and four people have succumbed to the outbreak in the city Mbandaka.
The World Health Organisation also confirmed the same. The General Director of the World Health Organisation, Doctor Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus tweeted and wrote,
“A new Ebola outbreak detected in western DRC, near Mbandaka, Equateur province. @MinSanteRDC has identified 6 cases, of which 4 people have died. The country is also in the final phase of battling Ebola in eastern DRC, #COVID19 & the World’s largest measles outbreak.”
The Health Minister addressed a press conference and said,
“The National Institute of Biomedical Research (INRB) has confirmed to me that samples from Mbandaka tested positive for Ebola.”
2,280 deaths since 2018
The Minister also said that the vaccine and medicine will be dispatched to the city shortly. The outbreak comes with serious concern as the city is the transport hub of Congo along the Congo River that has a population of a million people. The outbreak had claimed 33 lives in 2018. Although there is hope that the country could deal with the outbreak better this time around.
Since July 2018, the eastern part of Congo alone has seen 2,280 deaths and there was an anticipation that the region would be declared Ebola-free by the end of 2020. In 2019’s Ebola outbreak which reported 28,000 cases claimed over 11,000 lives as the World Health Organisation declared it as a global health emergency.
A deadly disease, Ebola, affects the human and the non-primates by infecting a group of viruses of the Ebolavirus family. Ebola causes sudden fever, weakness, muscle pain, and sore throat that leads up to vomiting, diarrhea, and bleeding. According to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the virus was first detected in 1976 near the Ebola River in Congo. Since then, it has led to several outbreaks in the continent of Africa.
Source: The Quint
