BENI: The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has claimed more than 2,000 lives out of a total of 3,000 recorded cases since August last year, health officials said Friday.
“In total, there have been 2,006 deaths (1,901 confirmed and 105 probable),” officials said in a bulletin dated Thursday.
“Since the start of the epidemic, the number of cases is 3,004, including 2,899 confirmed and 105 probable,” it added. The outbreak of the haemorrhagic virus began in North Kivu province in eastern DR Congo on August 1, 2018 and spread to Ituri province. Officials also reported that some 902 people were cured of the disease.
Ebola is named after a river in northern DR Congo, formerly named Zaire, where the virus was first identified in 1976. The latest outbreak is the second-deadliest on record after more than 11,000 people were killed in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia between 2014 and 2016.
The WHO has declared the epidemic a “public health emergency of international concern” and so far nearly 200,000 people have been vaccinated.
(Agencies)
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