On Friday, officials reported the detection of a case of Ebola fever in a province in the northwest of the Democratic Republic of the Congo — far from the epicenter of the deadliest outbreak of the disease in the country’s history, UNN reports, citing Reuters.
Details
According to Jean-René Galekwa Wundawa, acting governor of South Ubangi province, where the city of Gwaka is located, the man who died on Tuesday was a resident of the settlement. He had previously traveled from South Kivu province (in the east of the country) through Rwanda and Uganda, after which he returned to the Congo and arrived in South Ubangi — a province bordering the Congo and the Central African Republic.
Jean-Jacques Muyembe, who heads the Congo’s National Institute for Biomedical Research in Kinshasa, confirmed on Friday that the man had tested positive for the Ebola virus.
Authorities fear a wide circle of contacts because the patient used road and river transport; neighboring provinces and countries may be at risk, Jean-Jacques Mbungani — a former health minister and lawmaker representing the region — said on the social network X.
No cases of transmission within South Ubangi province have been recorded so far, so it was not included on the list of provinces officially affected by the epidemic (the beginning of which was first announced in mid-May).
We should add
The current Ebola outbreak — already the seventeenth in the Congo — has so far claimed the lives of 3,349 of the 6,942 people who contracted the disease (according to the latest government data). It is the second-largest outbreak in recorded history, surpassed only by the epidemic in West Africa that lasted from 2014 to 2016.