More than 1,500 people have died in nearly 10
months after an outbreak of Ebola hit the Democratic Republic of Congo, the
health ministry said Monday.
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| A health worker checks the fever of travellers coming across South Sudan's Nimule border town from Uganda on June 19, 2019. More than 1,500 people have died in nearly 10 months after an outbreak of Ebola hit the Democratic Republic of Congo. |
1,506
people had died as of Sunday the 23rd June 2019, out of 2,239
recorded cases, it said.
Earlier
this month, the virus claimed two lives in neighbouring Uganda among a family
who had travelled to the DRC.
Nearly
141,000 people have been vaccinated in the affected eastern DRC provinces of
Ituri and North Kivu, the epicentre of the outbreak.
Ebola
spreads among humans through close contact with the blood, body fluids,
secretions or organs of an infected person, or objects contaminated by such
fluids.
The
current outbreak in the DRC is the worst on record after an epidemic that
struck mainly in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone between 2014 and 2016,
killing more than 11,300 people.
Chronic
violence and militia activity in Ituri and North Kivu as well as hostility to
medical teams among locals have hampered the response.
On
Monday, a crowd of people opposed to the burial of two Ebola victims in the
Beni area burnt the vehicle of a health team, local police chief Colonel Safari
Kazingufu told AFP.
He said a
member of the medical team had been injured in the attack and taken to
hospital.
The
United Nations in May nominated an emergency coordinator to deal with the
crisis.
But the
World Health Organisation said this month that the outbreak currently does not
represent a global threat. - AFP
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