44 Confirmed Dead As Ebola Cases In DR Congo Rise To 78

It has been reported that no less than seventy-eight cases of Ebola have been recorded in an outbreak in northeast Democratic Republic of Congo.

 

DRC officials and the World Health Organization on Friday revealed that the outbreak has now claimed 44 lives, 

 

According to a report by the Agence France Presse, AFP, the latest outbreak of the viral disease, which is highly contagious and frequently fatal if untreated, has prompted a visit by the head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , the health ministry said in a statement.

 

“In all, 78 cases of haemorrhagic fever have been reported in the region, of which 51 are confirmed and 27 probable” while “24 suspect cases are under investigation”, according to reports from Congolese authorities and the WHO.

 

Confirmed cases are verified by way of laboratory tests on samples taken from patients. The cases treated as “probable” often concern diseased people who had a close epidemiological link with confirmed cases, but have not been tested.

 

Congolese authorities reported “two deaths of confirmed cases at Beni” — a trading town with a population approaching a quarter of a million people in North Kivu province.

 

There were also “five new confirmed cases at Mabalako, including a health worker at the Health Reference Centre in Mangina,” the epicentre of the outbreak in the Beni region.

 

“We are expecting to see more cases,” WHO spokesman  Tarik Jasarevic told reporters in Geneva.

 

The outbreak is the tenth to strike the DRC since 1976, when Ebola was first identified and named after a river in the north of the country.

 

It affects a part of the country wracked by violence for more than 20 years, from all-out war to insurgency and sustained ethnic clashes.

 

Forty-one deaths were reported in North Kivu and three in neighbouring Ituri region to the north, according to the health ministry.