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 Health officials are trying to trace 125 people thought to be linked
to the cases identified in the remote northeastern province of Bas-Uele
province in northeastern Congo near the border with Central African
Republic, WHO's Congo spokesman Eugene Kabambi said.
Three people have so far died among the 19 suspected and confirmed
cases, he added.
It was not immediately clear how the first victim, a deceased male,
caught the virus, although past outbreaks have been linked to
contact with infected bush meat such as apes.
The outbreak comes just a year after the end of an epidemic in West
Africa killed more than 11,300 people mostly in Guinea, Sierra Leone
and Liberia.
However, Congo, whose dense forests contain the River Ebola near
where the disease was first detected in 1976, has experienced many
outbreaks and has mostly succeeded in containing them without
large-scale loss of life.
The GAVI global vaccine alliance said on Friday some 300,000
emergency doses of an Ebola vaccine developed by Merck <MRK.N> could
be available in case of a large-scale outbreak and that it stood
ready to support the Congo government on the matter.
[to top of second column] |
(Reporting by Aaron Ross; Writing by Emma Farge; Editing by Louise
Ireland and Gareth Jones)
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