One year on from DR Congo Ebola outbreak

ANKARA

A second death from Ebola virus was confirmed in Goma, the largest city in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) bordering Rwanda, authorities said.

“Our response teams have just detected and isolated a second case on July 30, 2019, a priori unrelated to the first case," Carly Nzanzu Kasivita, governor of the province of North Kivu -- whose Goma is the capital -- and Dr Jean-Jacques Muyembe, head of the expert committee, said in a joint statement late Wednesday.

The second patient "arrived in Goma since July 13, 2019, from a mining area in the province of Ituri, without signs of disease, and developed the first signs on July 22, 2019," the statement said.

"His illness was not detected in time," Muyembe told Anadolu Agency, referring to the death of the patient.

In their statement, the two Congolese officials called on locals to collaborate with the response teams in order to ensure "neighboring countries that all measures are being taken to strengthen surveillance at points of entry and sanitary control".

Rwanda and Uganda have been on high alert to prevent a possible spread of Ebola since the deadly disease broke out last August, screening travelers entering the country, among other measures.

Emergency

“In the last year, there have been more than 2,600 confirmed cases, including more than 1,800 deaths in parts of Ituri and North Kivu provinces. Almost one in three ‘cases’ is a child. Every single ‘case’ is someone who has gone through an unimaginable ordeal. More than 770 have survived,” said a joint statement by heads of agencies on the Ebola outbreak in DRC.

“At this critical juncture, we reaffirm our collective commitment to the people of the DRC; we mourn for those we have lost; and we call for solidarity to end this outbreak,” it added.

Last month, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC)”.

Ebola -- a tropical fever which first appeared in 1976 in Sudan and the DRC -- can be transmitted to humans from wild animals.

It can also reportedly spread through contact with body fluids, infected persons or of those who have succumbed to the virus.

Ebola caused global alarm in 2014 when the world's worst outbreak began in West Africa, killing more than 11,300 people and infecting an estimated 28,600 as it swept through Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.