Announcement by the Ministry of Health comes almost three months after the DRC ended its eleventh Ebola outbreak.
The country’s Ministry of Health has identified a new case of Ebola near the city of Butembo in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
On February 1, a woman with symptoms of the deadly virus was found in the town of Biena, who died on February 3 in the hospital in Butembo. She is married to a man who contracted the virus in a previous outbreak.
‘The provincial response team is already working hard. It will be supported by the national response team that will visit Butembo soon, “the ministry said in a statement on Sunday.
The announcement is possibly the beginning of the 12th Ebola outbreak of the DRC since the virus was discovered near the Ebola River in 1976, more than double any other country.
It comes almost three months after the DRC announced the end of its 11th outbreak hundreds of miles to the west, killing 130 people and killing 55 people. The outbreak overlapped with an earlier one in the east that killed more than 2,200 people, the second-most in the history of the disease.
The rise of more cases could complicate efforts to eradicate COVID-19, which infected 23,600 people and killed 681 in the DRC. A vaccination campaign is expected to begin in the first half of this year.
Ebola is a hemorrhagic fever caused by viruses and spread by contact with body fluids. In extreme cases, it causes fatal bleeding through internal organs, mouth, eyes or ears.