Congo confirms two Ebola deaths

Officials think strain of virus different from West Africa’s

American Aid goods are offloaded from an airplane, to be used in the fight against the Ebola virus spreading in the city of  Monrovia, Liberia, Sunday, Aug. 24, 2014. Two alarming new cases of Ebola have emerged in Nigeria, widening the circle of people sickened beyond the immediate group of caregivers who treated a dying airline passenger in one of Africa's largest cities. The outbreak also continues to spread elsewhere in West Africa, with 142 more cases recorded, bringing the new total to 2,615 with 1,427 deaths, the World Health Organization said Friday. (AP Photo/Abbas Dulleh)
American Aid goods are offloaded from an airplane, to be used in the fight against the Ebola virus spreading in the city of Monrovia, Liberia, Sunday, Aug. 24, 2014. Two alarming new cases of Ebola have emerged in Nigeria, widening the circle of people sickened beyond the immediate group of caregivers who treated a dying airline passenger in one of Africa's largest cities. The outbreak also continues to spread elsewhere in West Africa, with 142 more cases recorded, bringing the new total to 2,615 with 1,427 deaths, the World Health Organization said Friday. (AP Photo/Abbas Dulleh)

KINSHASA, Congo -- Two Ebola-related deaths have been confirmed in Congo, the country's health minister said Sunday, though local officials believe the cases in the Central African country are unrelated to the outbreak in West Africa that has killed more than 1,400 people.

Eight samples were taken from Djera, located in the Boende region of Congo's northwest Equateur province, and two of them were positive, Health Minister Felix Kabange Numbi said on state television Sunday.

Djera, a collection of villages, is more than 745 miles from Congo's capital, Kinshasa. It is about 370 miles from the provincial capital, Mbandaka.

Kabange said Djera would be placed under quarantine.

Congolese officials believe Ebola has killed 13 people in the region, including five health workers, Kabange said.

He said 11 people were sick and in isolation and that 80 contacts were being traced.

"This epidemic has nothing to do with the one in West Africa," Kabange said.

The Ebola strain in Congo is different than the one seen in West Africa, said Lambert Mende, the country's information minister. Among the dead are a doctor and four nurses, he said.

This is the seventh outbreak of Ebola in Congo. The viral disease, which has no known cure or vaccine, was first reported in 1976 in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan.

In addition to erecting a treatment center in Djera, Congo's government has set up a committee that includes international medical organizations to coordinate a response to the outbreak, Mende said.

The country has also banned hunting in the area, Mende said. The disease is believed to reside in fruit bats, which can infect humans through bodily secretions. Humans pass it on through contact with infected bodily fluids.

"The experience acquired during the six previous epidemics of Ebola will contribute to the containing of this illness," Kabange said.

The World Health Organization said an outbreak of hemorrhagic gastroenteritis in the Boende region has killed 70 people in recent weeks.

The WHO said last week that those deaths were not Ebola-related, but WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said by email Sunday that the information was the result of "miscommunication from the field."

Hartl said on Twitter that samples tested at a national laboratory were positive for Ebola and that the results of confirmation tests from a laboratory in Gabon would likely come back today.

He said it was possible the outbreak could be unrelated to the outbreak in West Africa, where a total of 2,615 infections and 1,427 deaths have been recorded in four countries -- Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Nigeria.

On Sunday, the first British citizen confirmed to be infected with Ebola in the West Africa outbreak was evacuated from Sierra Leone on a jet sent by the Royal Air Force, a Sierra Leone official said Sunday.

The WHO is also considering medical evacuation for a Senegalese health worker who has become infected in the country, the United Nations' health agency said.

Neither patient was identified by name.

The British patient was working at an Ebola treatment center in eastern Sierra Leone, the region most affected by the outbreak, said Sidie Yayah Tunis, director of communications for the country's Health Ministry.

The Senegalese health worker is an epidemiologist deployed from a WHO partner organization, Hartl said.

The two cases highlight the risks facing health workers on the front lines of the battle against Ebola.

"This is the first time someone working under the aegis of WHO has fallen ill with the disease," the WHO said in a statement, adding that more than 225 health workers have been infected and nearly 130 have died from Ebola during the West African outbreak.

The British patient was transported via ambulance to Sierra Leone's main airport in the town of Lungi, Tunis said.

Britain's Department of Health said the patient was being flown on a specially equipped RAF transport plane to Northolt air base in London.

He will be treated at London's Royal Free Hospital, which has an isolation unit for disease. The department said in a statement that the patient "is not currently seriously unwell."

Elsewhere, the Nigerian Medical Association said Sunday that it has suspended a public sector doctor strike to help efforts to contain Ebola in the country.

The association directed doctors to return to work today while negotiations with the government continue. The strike started July 1, before Liberian-American Patrick Sawyer flew to Nigeria and introduced the virus in Lagos, the commercial capital.

Nigerian Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said earlier this month that though the doctor strike was putting Nigeria at a disadvantage, it hadn't affected the containment efforts. The government has been appealing to doctors to return to work to help contain the virus and has been asking volunteers to join in the efforts, including contact tracing of people under surveillance.

Nigeria's government said the country has 14 confirmed cases. The WHO on Friday reported 16 cases in the country, saying 12 have been confirmed and that four are suspected. There was no reason provided for the discrepancy between the two figures.

Information for this article was contributed by Saleh Mwanamilongo, Clarence Roy-Macaulay, Jill Lawless and Jim Gomez of The Associated Press, and by Franz Wild, Shannon Pettypiece and Malcolm Beith of Bloomberg News.

A Section on 08/25/2014

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