A single death has been confirmed—now public health officials must keep an outbreak from becoming an epidemic
A nurse suits up in Liberia before entering an Ebola red zone in 2015. Now, a single case of Ebola has been confirmed in Congo by the World Health Organization. (UNMEER – Flickr/Creative Commons)
By Erin Blakemore
It’s been three years since the Democratic Republic of Congo faced down its last epidemic of Ebola. Now, a case of Ebola has again been confirmed in the country—and public health officials taking the threat seriously.
Starting on April 22, nine people have been stricken with hemorrhagic fever,a group of illnesses that strike multiple systems in the body and that result from a family of viruses that includes Ebola. According to Reuters, three have died from the fever so far, but only one of those cases has been confirmed as Ebola. The World Health Organization has sent specialists to the area, the Associated Press reports.
The new case suggests that Ebola is back in the Democratic Republic of Congo—raising the specter not just of the 2014 outbreak that sickened 66 and killed 49, but the much larger (unrelated) outbreak that swept through West Africa between 2014 and 2016. In the West Africa outbreak, notes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over 28,000 people were infected and 11,325 of them died.
Categories: Africa, Biology, Congo, Environment, Epidemiology, Medicine, Microbiology, Public Health, Science, Virology, World news
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