The Ebola outbreak in Congo, the world's fastest-growing outbreak of the disease on record, has now spread to seven provinces in the African country and is showing no signs of slowing down.
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According to the governor of the northwestern province of Sud-Ubangi, Jean-Rene Galekwa Vundawe, Congo's national research institute tested a sample and found traces of the Bundibugyo virus, the rare kind of Ebola that caused the current outbreak.
The statement, which was issued on Thursday and reported by local media outlets on Friday, said the sample was from the Bulu health district in Sud-Ubangi. It did not disclose other information about the source of the infection.
Local lawmaker and former health minister Jean-Jacques Mbungani said on X on Thursday a positive case was recorded in Gwaka, a town in Sud-Ubangi province. He said the patient was a 23-year-old man and has died.
Mbungani said in just three weeks the man had departed from South Kivu province — where confirmed Ebola cases have been reported — and then travelled to Rwanda and Uganda. He then travelled to Congo's Ituri province, the epicentre of the outbreak.
He then travelled from the northeast of the country to the northwest through the provinces of Tshopo, Mongala and Sud-Ubangi, according to Mbungani.
Doctors and local authorities in Sud-Ubangi were alerted to a patient that had a fever and was vomiting blood, Mbungani told The Associated Press on Friday, adding the man had died on Tuesday. Samples were then taken after the patient had died and were sent to the national research institute.
The development makes Sud-Ubangi the seventh province affected by the outbreak — and the first in western Congo — a worrisome spread outward from what was previously concentrated in the country's east.
A case was detected in Kinshasa in May in a person who had travelled from eastern Congo, but the Congolese capital, more than 1600km away from the epicentre, was not classified as an affected province.
As of Thursday, 7022 cases and 3398 deaths have been reported, according to the latest government figures released Friday.
The World Health Organisation has said the outbreak remains out of control and is on track to surpass the 2014-2016 West Africa Ebola outbreak, the deadliest on record, which killed more than 11,000 people, primarily in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
WHO said in August there is a risk the outbreak could spread from Congo to the Central African Republic and South Sudan, which border the affected provinces.
Neighbouring Uganda, which had reported 20 cases since May, declared itself free of Ebola in July.
Australian Associated Press
