- KINSHASA (Reuters) - Twenty-eight
people have now died in an outbreak of hemorrhagic fever in the Democratic
Republic of Congo that doctors say might be the dreaded Ebola virus, a
World Health Organization (WHO) official said on Friday.
-
- An expert medical team was still trying to reach the
seat of the outbreak but reported from the area that the number of cases
of suspected infection was now 55, almost double the figure cited in the
Health Ministry's first announcement on Thursday.
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- That initial report had said 30 cases of the fever had
been detected at the village of Misangandu in Western Kasai province in
three weeks. The ministry had said there had been 17 deaths.
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- ``The investigation team has yet to arrive at the site
and these new numbers are still to be confirmed,'' Florimond Tshioko, a
WHO doctor and expert on hemorrhagic fever, told Reuters in the capital,
Kinshasa.
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- ``We must not create panic and say this is Ebola because
we won't know that until we have conducted clinical examinations and performed
a lab test in South Africa.''
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- The emergency medical team had reached the town of Ilebo,
some 300 miles east of Kinshasa, by Friday night and still had a further
50 miles or so to cover, on foot and by boat, before it would reach the
stricken village.
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- It was the second feared outbreak of the virulent, ''flesh-eating''
Ebola virus this week, after 10 people died of a mystery illness in another
central African country, Gabon.
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- A member of a medical team said a nurse was among the
victims at Mekambo village in northeastern Gabon. A WHO official said it
was testing blood samples for traces of the Ebola virus.
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- There is no known cure and no vaccine for Ebola, which
bleeds 70 to 90 percent of victims to death in a matter of days.
-
- The virus is named after the river where it was first
identified in 1976 in the Democratic Republic of Congo, then known as Zaire.
Health care in Africa's third largest country, which has a population of
about 54 million, has long been poor and has now been devastated by three
years of civil war.
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- Ebola, which is passed on through contact with body fluids
and begins with aches and fever similar to flu symptoms, killed at least
245 people in the Congolese town of Kikwit in 1995.
-
- That same year, Hollywood released ``Outbreak,'' a thriller
starring Dustin Hoffman, which explores the horrific effects of an Ebola
outbreak in the Western world.
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- Only in the final stages, when the virus eats through
the victim's veins and arteries, causing massive internal and external
hemorrhaging, is it clear that Ebola has struck.
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- The biggest recent outbreak killed more than 170 people
in Uganda last year.
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