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A new case of Ebola has been recorded in the city of Goma, in eastern DRC, a transportation hub, said a Congolese health official on Tuesday, while the number of deaths by the virus has risen to 1,790.
This is the second case of Ebola detected in the lakeside town of more than two million people located near the Rwandan border.
"I have just been informed of a case of Ebola in Goma," AFP Aruna Abedi, Ebola response coordinator in North Kivu province, told AFP.
Health officials said the latest case concerns a man from a rural community in the north-east of the country who arrived in Goma on 13 July and was later diagnosed.
Mistrust of health officials and violence by militias, especially in rural areas, have repeatedly hampered efforts to contain the virus.
"Our response teams have just detected and isolated a second case on July 30, 2019. It is not initially linked to the first case," says an official statement signed by the Congolese professor and eminent research professor. on the Ebola virus, Professor Jean-Jacques Muyembe. by AFP.
According to the statement, the patient was being treated at the Ebola Treatment Center in Goma after arriving in the city from a mining sector in Ituri Province.
Congolese health officials said that "all measures are being taken to strengthen surveillance at entry points and sanitary control", while the virus could spread to neighboring countries.
Earlier this month, a pastor was tested positive and later died after arriving in Goma by bus, raising fears that the disease would spread rapidly across the densely populated city.
The latest outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo has killed 1,790 people since last August, according to figures released Tuesday.
By mid-July, the World Health Organization had labeled the epidemic "public health emergency of international concern" – a rare designation used only for the most serious epidemics.
Ebola is highly contagious and has an average mortality rate of about 50%.
It is transmitted to humans by wild animals and spreads by close contact with the blood, body fluids, secretions or organs of an infected person.
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