Ebola hits the Sud-Ubangi province of Congo after a patient traveled through Rwanda and Uganda | Today’s news
(Bloomberg) — Ebola has now spread to a seventh province in the Democratic Republic of Congo after a 23-year-old man tested positive for the virus after a cross-country trip that included a trip through neighboring Rwanda and Uganda.
The man died in Gwaka in the northwestern province of Sud-Ubangi after testing positive for the Bundibugyo strain of the Ebola virus, said Jean-Jacques Mbungi, a former Congolese health minister and national lawmaker. Provincial authorities declared an Ebola outbreak on Thursday after the Congolese National Institute for Biomedical Research confirmed the case, local news stations Identité News and Xinhua reported.
The man left Kamanyola in South Kivu and traveled through Rwanda and Uganda for about three weeks before returning to Congo, passing through Aru, Bunia, Kisangani, Bumba, Lisala and Akula en route to Gwaka, Mbungi said in a social media post on Thursday. The trip involved river travel and potentially exposed many people, he said.
The case widens an outbreak previously confined to an area roughly the size of the UK and raises new concerns about the spread of the virus along Congo’s heavily trafficked transport corridors. Ebola can cause severe vomiting and diarrhea, leading to dehydration, shock, and multiorgan failure. Almost half of the confirmed cases in the outbreak were fatal.
Congo had 6,942 confirmed infections and 3,349 deaths as of Wednesday. The outbreak affected 61 health zones in six provinces before the Sud-Ubangi case was confirmed.
Transmission has moderated in several hotspots in Ituri, the original epicenter, and accelerated in North Kivu, Africa, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told media on Thursday.
North Kivu accounted for 46 of the 99 new infections reported Wednesday, nearly matching Ituri’s 47, according to Congo’s National Institute of Public Health. An Ebola treatment facility in North Kivu was operating at 132% of available bed capacity, the institute said in a report on Thursday.
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