Another person died of Ebola in the north-western Congo, raising the number of victims to 10, health officials announced on Friday. The latest victim died on Thursday in Etoumbi district after being in contact with her husband, who succumbed to the haemorrhagic fever on May 11.
Authorities in the Congo have quarantined two north-western districts hit by the deadly Ebola virus to ensure the highly contagious disease does not spread, officials said on Friday. The two districts — Etoumbi, where eight deaths were recorded, and Mbomo, where a ninth person died — were sealed off on Wednesday.
The Congo’s top health official said on Monday he fears an outbreak of a rare haemorrhagic fever could spread from neighbouring Angola despite efforts to curtail cross-border traffic and monitor arrivals from the infected area. ”We’re worried despite the precautions we have taken,” he said.
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/ 3 February 2005
Leaders from Africa’s Congo Basin gather in Brazzaville with international officials on Saturday for a conference on the threats facing the region’s vast forest expanses, one of the world’s two lungs. The seven-nation meeting aims to breathe life into a conservation treaty signed in 1999, but which has so far made little progress.
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/ 21 December 2004
Residents of the village of Lengue-Lengue in northern Congo are waiting for the day gorillas will return to the Lossi wildlife sanctuary after being wiped out by the deadly Ebola fever. Ebola, an incurable haemorrhagic fever, has in three years wiped out 80% of Central Africa’s lowland gorillas living in the 320-square-kilometre sanctuary.
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/ 17 December 2004
Just a year ago, terrified inhabitants of African village of Mbomo desperately locked up their schools and churches and stayed inside their homes, not daring even to shake hands with each other for fear of contracting Ebola. Victims of this fever bleed to death after their internal organs liquefy.
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/ 19 November 2004
Human-rights groups on Friday urged the Congo’s government to ratify an international treaty that would protect the rights of pygmies, many of whom live in virtual slavery in the country. Most of the Congo’s estimated 600 000 pygmies live deep in its north-eastern forests, eking out an existence by hunting and gathering.
The Republic of Congo denied on Friday that President Denis Sassou Nguesso had declined an invitation to visit France this weekend because he has been named in a lawsuit there over the disappearance and alleged murder of 353 Congolese refugees.
A train derailed on Sunday in the south of the Central African Republic of Congo, killing 31 people and injuring scores of others, a government spokesman said on Tuesday. It was unclear what caused Sunday’s crash, which occurred about 150km south of the capital, Brazzaville.
Government forces killed seven rebels south of the capital in a rare firefight this week, a government spokesperson said. The rebels, loyal to renegade Pastor Frederic Bitsangou, were killed on Tuesday near Kinkala, 70km south of Brazzaville, spokesperson Alain Akouala said late on Thursday.
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/ 24 February 2004
The United Nations Congo mission is investigating reports of a series of massacres of about 100 civilians and seven soldiers by Mayi-Mayi fighters in southeast Congo, a UN spokesperson said on Tuesday. The killings allegedly were carried out since January at the town of Kitenge in Katanga province.
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/ 12 February 2004
The Aids virus is spreading in the main cities and towns of the Republic of Congo, with a higher average rate of HIV-positive people among women than among men, according to a survey published on Thursday. The survey shows that the national average rate of infection is 4,2% among people aged 15 to 49.
Polling stations opened early Sunday for the second round of legislative elections in Congo, but tens of thousands of people displaced by fighting were not expected to vote.
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/ 19 January 2001
The main players in Congo’s conflict are waiting to see whether interim president Joseph Kabila is a man of war or peace.
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/ 19 January 2001
There are certain people whose personalities are accurately depicted by their physical features — one such person was Laurent Desiré Kabila.