A 26-year-old woman was killed by the virus while her child is being treated 430 miles (700km) in South Kivu.
Cases have so far been identified in the provinces of North Kivu and Ituri.
The new cases in South Kivu show a persistent threat that could spread to neighboring countries in the East of Africa.
Ebola cases have been registered in Uganda unlike in Rwanda and Burundi. Rwanda Ministry of Health earlier this month warned that diseases could spread to the country but said would not close borders with DRCongo in Goma which is neighbored by South Kivu.
Two cases have so far been identified with one death registered in in Lwindi district in the Mwenga region the Southern province.
The victim is a 26-year-old woman and her surviving child that tested positive for Ebola. The child is being treated. Ebola cases have been concentrated in province of North Kivu and neighboring Ituri.
The disease remains a public health threat to all African countries where it has so far killed more than 1,900 people in DRC in the past year, infected at least 2,850 people. The virus could be on its way to other African countries that neighbor DRC in the South like Zambia, Malawi.
At a high-risk to contract of Ebola is Beni region where another case was diagnosed in North Kivu, last month. The victim in South Kivu had been vaccinated but could not survive the infection before traveled by bus, boat and road with her two children to Mwenga, where she died.
On the same day 120 contacts were registered by DRC government and vaccinated 20 “Teams from the national anti-Ebola coordination campaign arrived yesterday to provide support,” South Kivu Governor Theo Ngwabidje said.
Ebola response team on July 31 quarantined a family of 15 in the town of Birava, 18 miles (30km) north of Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu. The patients, included a mother and her six children, that reported a relative who escaped from a treatment center. Earlier this month, for people tested positive for Ebola, two of which died, in Goma, less than five miles from the porous border of Rwanda. Panic ensued as Rwanda closed its borders with DRC but the country later denied this ever happened. In June, three people from one family died in Uganda after returning from DR Congo via an unofficial crossing point.
The outbreak is the 10th since Ebola was identified in 1976, as the second deadliest in history after more than 11,000 people succumbed to the disease in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia between 2014-2016. The contagious disease is spread by contact between a normal person and an infected person’s or other animal’s bodily fluids. Spread may also occur from contact with items recently contaminated with bodily fluids.
The Express News
