Ebola outbreak ‘high risk’ for Congo: WHO

The Ebola outbreak in Congo represents a “high risk” for the country, the World Health Organisation says.

“As of now we don’t know the full extent of the outbreak,” WHO health emergencies program director Peter Salama said at a press conference in Geneva.

So far two cases have been confirmed, at least 18 others are suspected and three people have died in north-eastern Bas-Uele province.
The campaign against the virus is expected to cost $US10 million ($A13 million) over the next six months, according to WHO.

The priority to is to find more than 400 people who were in contact with the confirmed or suspected Ebola sufferers, Salama said.

An Ebola treatment centre has been set up in the region and a mobile clinic is due to follow.
The Central African country has suffered seven previous outbreaks of Ebola since the virus was discovered there in 1976. The last outbreak, in 2014, left 49 people dead.

The haemorrhagic fever has been most detrimental in West Africa, where it claimed more than 11,000 lives in 2014-15.

The WHO declared Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone – the three countries that had been most effected by the epidemic – free of Ebola in 2016.