2nd June, 2020
Democratic Republic of Congo declared a new Ebola epidemic on Monday in the western city of Mbandaka.
The town is more than 1,000 km away from another outbreak of the same deadly virus in the east. #EbolaEpidemic
Health Minister Eteni Longondo said four persons who died in Mbandaka were confirmed as positive cases.
This followed testing at the national biomedical laboratory in the capital Kinshasa.
“We have a new Ebola epidemic in Mbandaka,” Longondo told reporters.
“We are going to very quickly send them the vaccine and medicine.”
The outbreak was confirmed by World Health Organisation Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
He tweeted: “This outbreak is a reminder that #COVID19 is not the only health threat people face.”
Congo has been struggling to put an end to a nearly two-year-old Ebola outbreak near its eastern borders with Rwanda and Uganda.
The virus has killed more than 2,200 people, the world’s second-deadliest outbreak of the disease on record.
It was days away in April from declaring the end of that outbreak, its tenth since the virus was discovered in 1976, when a new chain of infection was confirmed in the east.
However, no new cases have been detected there in over 30 days.