Ebola Outbreak Is Declared in Congo, With at Least 3 Dead
By KIMIKO de FREYTAS-TAMURAMAY 12, 2017
NAIROBI, Kenya — An Ebola outbreak has been declared in northern Democratic Republic of Congo
and has killed at least three people in the past three weeks, the World Health Organization said on Friday.
Dr. Armand Sprecher, a public health specialist and Ebola expert who works with Doctors Without Borders — widely known by its French name, Médecins Sans Frontières — said by telephone from Brussels
that unless a full investigation were conducted, it would be hard to know how severe the new outbreak could be.
Thomas W. Geisbert, a microbiologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston and one of the inventors of the Ebola vaccine, said using the treatment "certainly looks like it would be effective" in the Democratic Republic of Congo because the vaccine is based on the Ebola strain
that has circulated in the country — the former Zaire.
Right now, the outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo is "very typical historically," in that it appears limited to a few dozen cases.
Normally, Dr. Geisbert said, the W.H.O., Doctors Without Borders or other agencies "would come in
and quarantine the cases, and they would be handled without things getting out of control." Allarangar Yokouidé, the W.H.O.
Of the five blood samples taken from the newest suspected cases
and analyzed by the Congolese National Institute of Biomedical Research, one tested positive for Ebola, according to the Health Ministry.
