Ebola (Illustration) – Jerome Delay / AP / SIPA
“A new epidemic” of Ebola hemorrhagic fever has declared himself in the northwest of the Democratic Republic of Congo, said Minister of Health Eteni Longondo on Monday. “There are already four people dead,” he added at a press conference. The four deaths were recorded in a district of Mbandaka, the capital of Equateur province, about 600 km as the crow flies north of the capital Kinshasa.
“The National Biomedical Research Institute (INRB) has just confirmed to me that the samples from Mbandaka are positive for Ebola virus disease Added the Minister. “We will send them the vaccine and the medicines very quickly,” he continued, planning to go to the site at the end of the week.
Another Ebola epidemic underway across the country
The province of Ecuador has been affected by a previous Ebola outbreak between May and July 2018 (54 cases for 33 dead and 21 survivors). “It’s a province that has already experienced the disease. They already have reflexes of what to do. They have already started the response at the local level since yesterday “Sunday, said the minister.
Another Ebola epidemic is still underway at the other end of the country, in the East, which has killed 2,280 people since August 2018. The end of this epidemic must be proclaimed on June 25, in the end countdown 42 days with no new cases. It is the eleventh epidemic of Ebola fever declared on Congolese soil since the discovery of the virus in this country then called Zaire in 1976. The DRC is also affected by the global epidemic of coronavirus (3,195 cases identified, including 2,896 in Kinshasa, and 72 deaths, according to the latest official figures released Monday.
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