Goma (DR Congo) (AFP)
Congolese health officials announced Tuesday that they have registered a new case of Ebola virus disease in Goma, a large city in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, on the border with Rwanda, after a first case diagnosed in mid-July.
"I have just been informed of a case of Ebola in Goma," Dr Aruna Abedi, coordinator of the Ebola response in North Kivu province, told AFP. capital city. "It was a gentleman who came from Mongbwalu and was followed in Bunia (Ituri), he fled our response teams and is in Goma," he said.
This case is the second recorded in this city of about two million inhabitants, since the declaration of the epidemic in the provinces of North Kivu and Ituri on August 1, 2018. The first case was discovered on 14 July.
In an official statement to AFP, signed by Congolese professor and expert Jean-Jacques Muyembe, it is noted: "Our teams of the response have just detected and isolate a second case on July 30, 2019, and a priori unrelated with the first case ".
According to this document, the patient "arrived in Goma since July 13, 2019 from a mining area in the province of Ituri, without signs of illness, and developed the first signs on July 22, 2019".
"The patient is currently at the Goma Ebola Treatment Center for treatment," said the statement, which was jointly signed by Nzanzu Kasivita Carly, Governor of North Kivu Province.
The two Congolese officials called on the population to collaborate with the response teams and assured "neighboring countries that all measures are being taken to strengthen surveillance at points of entry and sanitary control".
The tenth Ebola outbreak in the DRC is affecting the provinces of North Kivu and Ituri where it has killed 1,790 people, according to the latest figures released on Tuesday.
© 2019 AFP