Two Ebola-related deaths have been confirmed in Congo, the country’s health minister said Sunday. Local officials believe the cases are unrelated to the outbreak in West Africa that has killed more than 1,400 people, raising fears that a second outbreak has emerged.
Eight samples were taken from Djera, located in the Boende region of Congo’s northwest Equateur province, and two of them came back positive, Felix Kabange Numbi said on state television Sunday.
Congolese officials believe Ebola has killed 13 people in the region, including five health workers, Kabange said, adding that 11 people were sick and in isolation for suspected Ebola infection, and that 80 contacts were being traced.
However, said Kabange, “This epidemic has nothing to do with the one in West Africa.”
This is the seventh outbreak of Ebola in Congo, where the disease was first discovered in 1976. That outbreak — which took place in Yambuku and surrounding areas — sickened 318 people, killing nearly 90 percent of them (280). “The experience acquired during the six previous epidemics of Ebola will contribute to the containing of this illness,” Kabange said.
Boende is the region where the World Health Organization said an outbreak of hemorrhagic gastroenteritis has killed 70 people in recent weeks. The WHO said last week those deaths were not Ebola-related, but WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl told the Associated Press on Sunday that the information was the result of “miscommunication from the field.”
He said it was likely the outbreak was unrelated to the outbreak in West Africa, where a total of 2,615 infections and 1,427 deaths have been recorded in four countries — Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Nigeria.
One of the two cases that tested positive was for the Sudanese strain of the disease, while the other was a mixture between the Sudanese and the Zaire strain – the most lethal variety, Congolese health officials said. The outbreak in West Africa is the Zaire strain.
A WHO spokesperson said confirmation about whether this is a separate outbreak will likely arrive on Monday and cautioned that the notice about the two deaths has not been confirmed by the WHO.
Djera, a collection of villages, is more than 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) from Congo’s capital, Kinshasa. It is more than 600 kilometers from the provincial capital, Mbandaka. Kabange said Djera would be placed under quarantine.
*Stay tuned — more updates to come soon!