KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of the Congo – Ebola, the deadly virus that has increasingly hit Africa over the past few years, is once again threatening a violent region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, three months after the country’s health authorities declared the latest outbreak.
The Ministry of Health announced on Sunday that the wife of a farmer who survived the disease died on February 3, three days after she first showed symptoms, in a hospital in Butembo, a city of 700,000 in North Kivu Province. The ministry said a blood test of the woman performed in Butembo was positive for the virus.
The World Health Organization said in a statement that its epidemiologists are investigating, that more than 70 victims’ contacts have been identified and that disinfection is underway with the visits to the sites.
It was not immediately clear whether the victim’s infection could be traced back to the Ebola outbreak that ravaged North Kivu for nearly two years, in August 2018. It killed more than 2,000 people.
The outbreak, declared in June last year, was the country’s 10th and second worst recorded, suppressed by repeated rebel violence in the region and attacks on health workers. Just as it was declining, an 11th outbreak was declared in the western part of the country, killing 55 people and declaring them defeated last November.
According to the WHO statement, blood samples from the woman who died on February 3 were sent to the main laboratory of the National Institute of Biomedical Research in Kinshasa to determine the genome sequence to identify the strain of the virus that killed her.
The news of the infection came when the Democratic Republic of Congo, like much of Africa, faced the new waves of coronavirus infections, which had already put serious strain on public health sources.
Although it is too early to assess the seriousness of the new Ebola outbreak, humanitarian groups operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo have said they fear the worst because of the history of outbreaks since Ebola first appeared there in 1976, when the country was known, was discovered. like Zaire. The latest outbreak would be the fifth in the past four years in the country, which is more than three times the size of Texas.
“We know that Ebola is endemic in this region, but we can take nothing for granted and we must act quickly to stop the spread,” said Whitney Elmer, director of operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo for Mercy Corps, the international charity.
Despite the development of vaccines for Ebola in recent years, it remains one of the deadliest and most contagious viruses. Most cases are caused by human-to-human transmission through contact with the body fluids or secretions of an infected person. The risk of infection remains high after death, which means that the bodies of victims must be handled by people wearing protective equipment and buried immediately.
The worst Ebola epidemic in history has plagued the West African countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone from March 2014 to June 2016. More than 28,000 people have been infected and more than 11,000 have died.