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| Ebola: 17 people die as new outbreak of virus is reported in Democratic Republic of Congo | Ebola: 17 people die as new outbreak of virus is reported in Democratic Republic of Congo |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| Seventeen people are reported to have died in the Democratic Republic of Congo after health officials declared an Ebola outbreak in the central African country. | |
| Local health officials said an additional 21 patients were showing signs of haemorrhagic fever. | |
| Medical teams dispatched to the zone took five samples from suspected active cases and two tested positive for the Zaire strain of the Ebola virus, the ministry said in a statement. | |
| DRC was not affected by the major 2014 outbreak of the virus, which killed thousands of people across west Africa. | |
| Earlier on Tuesday Congo's health ministry confirmed two cases of Ebola in the country's northwest, with a further 10 suspected cases. | |
| DRC’s health minister, Oly Ilunga, said [in French] a rapid response team would be deployed to the Équateur Province in the northwest of the country on Wednesday morning. | |
| Ebola first emerged in 1976 in what is now the DRC, and is named after a river in the country. | |
| In recent decades there have been a number of outbreaks there caused by the Zaire Ebola species. | |
| The virus is spread in the blood, body fluids or organs of a person or animal with the infection. | |
| There are currently no licensed treatments or vaccines for Ebola, although potential new therapies are currently under development. | |
| More follows... | More follows... |