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A child died of Ebola in the south of the DRC, health authorities said Monday, the second person to succumb to the virus since the epidemic spread in the eastern province.
The announcement last week of the first confirmed cases in South Kivu has rekindled concerns that this highly contagious disease could cross the porous borders of the Central African country, where it has more than 1 900 dead since the month of August of last year.
"A seven-year-old child died of Ebola yesterday" in the Mwenga region of South Kivu, said Claude Bahizire, communications officer of the health division of South Kivu province.
The first death in South Kivu was a woman in her twenties who had avoided the movement controls to travel from the city of Beni, North Kivu, the epicenter of the epidemic, to Bukavu , the capital of South Kivu, then to Mwenga.
She died Wednesday and her son, who is seven months old, has been diagnosed with a virus and is under treatment.
Bahizire said that "two other suspected cases, two women, were detected and admitted to the Bukavu transit center".
The two women "were in contact with the woman who died last week while she was staying in Bukavu on the way to Mwenga," he added.
The outbreak of the hemorrhagic virus began in North Kivu on August 1, 2018 and spread to the province of Ituri.
According to the latest figures released Sunday, 1,934 people died while 862 were healed.
The latest epidemic is the second deadliest ever after the death of more than 11,000 people in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia between 2014 and 2016.
Also Monday, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, called on the nine countries that share a border with DR Congo to show solidarity in stopping the spread of the Ebola virus.
"We now have an effective Ebola vaccine more than 97% and effective treatments over 90% if they are used early enough," he said in Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of Congo.
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