Democratic Republic Congo says two samples test positive for Ebola!

Democratic Republic Congo says two samples test positive for Ebola in northern outbreak.HT: Crof.

Thanks to Cédric Moro for tweeting the link to this Reuters report: Congo says two samples test positive for Ebola in northern outbreak.

Two out of eight cases tested in an outbreak of deadly fever in the north of the Democratic Republic of Congo were positive for the Ebola virus, Health Minister Felix Kabange Numbi said on Sunday. 

The World Health Organization said on Thursday that at least 70 people had died in an outbreak of hemorrhagic gastroenteritis in Congo's northern Equateur province. A WHO spokesman had said the outbreak was not Ebola.

 Via Congo24.net, an August 24 report: An unidentified disease in DRC. The Google translation:

Experts from WHO would have arrived yesterday Boende in the province of Ecuador. Their mission is to support patients and determine what condition it is. WHO teams took samples in short analysis at the National Institute of Biomedical Research in Kinshasa. Additional samples must be made. Because right now the disease has not yet been identified but it would have done according to health authorities there 65 people in one month. 

Currently three health areas are affected, Wetsikengo, Lokalia and Wafanya, all in the Boende territory. Samples were taken to determine the nature of the disease 

A contagious disease 

We are still at the stage of identification, but we already know that the disease is contagious, cases of contamination of nurses who treated patients were identified. We also know it is manifested by fever, severe diarrhea and vomiting. 

In addition to the WHO teams, the Congolese Minister of Public Health, Felix Kabange Numbi also visited the province of Equateur. The Minister would also promised to send another team of doctors at the health area Djera, located twenty kilometers Boende to resample. The goal is to have as soon as possible about the disease.

Google Maps tells me Boende is east of Mbandaka, which is on the Congo River. If the outbreak really is Ebola, it's likely to be hard to contain. The presence of the minister of health suggests the government is taking this seriously.
 DRC: four people died of Ebola. Excerpt from a Google translation:

Dr. Felix Kabange Numbi announced Sunday, August 24 the town of Boende affected by the virus will be quarantined on an area of ​​100 km around. 

The Congolese Minister of Health told the BBC that access will be strictly limited in this town in the province of Equateur, full of nearly 40,000 people. 

The positive samples were taken from people with hemorrhagic fever has killed 13 people since August 11 in the province, located in the northwest of the country.

For now, Dr. Felix Kabange Numbi said the locality is too far from the border to think that this is the same strain as that applied to the West Africa. The couple who died would have consumed contaminated with the virus monkey. And medical staff who treated him were contaminated.

It's not clear just what happened, except that two people died from eating contaminated bush meat, and then, presumably, two of their healthcare workers contracted the disease and died as well. (The BBC Africa site, in English, has a much earlier report.)

I expect we'll see much more coverage of this outbreak. 

Via Digitalcongo.net, an August 23 AFP report: Although hastily equated with Ebola hemorrhagic fever reported the alarming Equateur still casts doubt of WHO and MSF. Excerpt from the Google translation:

The World Health Organization (WHO) and Doctors Without Borders (MSF) are still reluctant to comment on the true nature of the sudden outbreak of hemorrhagic fever emerged in the Congolese province of Equateur and causing numerous mysterious deaths while rumors were not substantiated by reliable medical tests support the view of a new outbreak of Ebola fear as is the sad case in West Africa.  

With the dead in series of Ecuador, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the NGO Doctors Without Borders abstained prematurely to any connection with the Ebola virus, it is too early to say that it is a hemorrhagic fever, which causes the death of 13 people in the northwest of the Democratic Republic of Congo, warned yesterday the WHO and MSF. 

"Many died with bleeding symptoms, but there are severe malaria that can also give these symptoms, or typhoid fever, " he told AFP on condition of anonymity, an official of the World Health Organization based in Kinshasa. 

"We are still waiting biological confirmations to determine what kind of disease it is," said AFP's communications officer for MSF in Kinshasa, Amanda Cohn, whose teams are present in the affected area, Boende, a territory of the Province of Equateur (Northwest). 

Minister of Public Health, Dr. Felix Kabange Numbi said Thursday AFP that "13 people have died since August he hemorrhagic fever of unknown origin", stressing that they presented, "terminally ill, vomiting of blackish material." 

The first victim of hemorrhagic fever was a pregnant woman and the other twelve people died after being in contact with during his illness and after her death. 

"Five health personnel have died, year doctor, two nurses, a medical officer and a waiter. The other victims were relatives or the villagers who attended the funeral," said the minister, adding that since protection kits have been distributed to health personnel. 

Samples were carried out and must be treated at the National Institute of Biomedical Research (INRB) and the laboratory in Franceville, Gabon, to determine the exact origin of the disease.

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