The last Ebola outbreak in the DRC ended six months ago.
There is a confirmed new case of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
“On 11 May 2017, the Minister of Health of the Democratic Republic of the Congo notified WHO & partners of a lab-confirmed case of #Ebola,” the WHO tweeted on Friday afternoon.
“The #Ebola case in the Democratic Republic of Congo was confirmed by a national reference laboratory in Kinshasa #DRC.”
For now, further details remain sketchy. The fate of the patient with Ebola remains unclear, and we don’t know what particular Ebola strain this is.
In 2014, an Ebola outbreak across Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone killed more than 11 000 people.
But there is good reason to believe that the Democratic Republic of Congo can prevent an outbreak on this scale, given its recent history of dealing with Ebola outbreaks. The country has dealt with at least two previous outbreaks in the last five years: The first, in 2012, left 36 people dead; the second, in 2014, killed 49.