WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION CONFIRMS SECOND CASE EBOLA OUTBREAK IN CONGO.

The World Health Organization has confirmed a second case of the Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The news comes after an outbreak of 17 other suspected cases in the past week. Local health officials in the Democratic Republic of Congo are attempting to find 125 people thought to be linked to cases in the remote northeastern province of Bas-Uele, near the border with the Central African Republic, according to World Health Organization (WHO) spokesman
Eugene Kabambi. The province is thousands of kilometers northeast of capital, Kinshasa.
This latest case brings the total of suspected or confirmed Ebola cases to 19 in the past week. Three of the cases have been fatal, including the man suspected of being the first victim.
The current outbreak comes one year after the end of an Ebola epidemic that killed more than 11,000 people, primarily in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, a continent-wide mechanism to monitor disease outbreaks, said it had activated its emergency operational centre to monitor the situation in Congo. The Central African country has suffered seven previous outbreaks of Ebola since the virus was discovered in the country in 1976. The last outbreak, in 2014, left 49 people dead.
NAN reports that the GAVI global vaccine alliance said on Friday some 300,000 emergency doses of an Ebola vaccine developed by Merck could be available in case of a large-scale outbreak, after the WHO confirmed a fatal case in Congo. The vaccine, known as “rVSV-ZEBOV”, was shown to be highly protective against Ebola in clinical trials published in December 2016.

Vaccination: Both Congo and its western neighbor, Republic of Congo, have experienced Ebola outbreaks in the past and international organizations have said they are ready to assist in the event of an epidemic.
The GAVI vaccine alliance said Friday that about 300,000 emergency doses of an Ebola vaccine could be available in case of a severe outbreak, and was ready to support the Congolese government.
"This is the eighth Ebola epidemic in the Congo, it will not shake the population," said Congolese Health Minister Oly Ilunga Kalenga on Friday.
The Ebola virus was first discovered near the River Ebola in 1976 in northern Democratic Republic of Congo, then known as Zaire. The Ebola virus is often fatal, causing internal and external bleeding, as well as impaired kidney and liver function. The virus is spread by coming into contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person.