KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of the Congo – Ebola, the deadly virus that has increasingly hit Africa in recent years, is once again threatening a region of the Democratic Republic of Congo marked by violence, three months after the country’s health officials declare the last outbreak expired.
The Ministry of Health announced on Sunday that the wife of a farmer who survived the disease died on February 3, three days after showing the first symptoms, in a hospital in Butembo, a city of 700,000 people in North Kivu province. A woman’s blood test carried out in Butembo was positive for the virus, the ministry said.
The World Health Organization said in a statement that its epidemiologists were investigating, that more than 70 victim contacts had been identified and that disinfection of the sites she had visited was underway.
It was not immediately clear whether the victim’s infection was traceable to the Ebola outbreak that devastated North Kivu for almost two years, starting in August 2018. It killed more than 2,000 people.
This outbreak, which was declared last June, was the 10th and second worst on record in the country, punctuated by recurrent rebel violence in the region and attacks on health professionals. As it was declining, an 11th outbreak was declared in the western part of the country, which killed 55 people and was declared defeated last November.
The WHO statement said blood samples from the woman who died on February 3 were sent to the main laboratory of the National Institute for Biomedical Research in Kinshasa for sequencing the genome and identifying the strain of the virus that killed her.
The news of the infection came while the Democratic Republic of Congo, like much of Africa, is battling new waves of coronavirus infection, which has already severely affected public health resources.
Although it is too early to assess the seriousness of the new Ebola outbreak, humanitarian groups operating in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have said they fear the worst because of its history of outbreaks since Ebola was first discovered in 1976, when the country was known as Zaire. The latest outbreak would be the fifth in the past four years in the country, which is more than three times the size of Texas.
“We know that Ebola is endemic in this region, but we cannot take anything for granted and we must take swift action to prevent it from spreading,” said Whitney Elmer, director of operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo for Mercy Corps, the international charity.
Despite the development of Ebola vaccines in recent years, it remains one of the most lethal and contagious viruses. Most cases are caused by person-to-person transmission through contact with body fluids or secretions from an infected person. The risk of infection remains high after death, which means that victims’ bodies must be handled by people wearing protective equipment and must be buried immediately.
The worst Ebola epidemic in history hit the countries of West Africa, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, from March 2014 to June 2016. More than 28,000 people were infected and more than 11,000 died.