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GOAM, Democratic Republic of Congo – A second person died after contracting the Ebola virus in Goma, a major transit center in the Democratic Republic of Congo on the Rwandan border, according to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
The patient died Wednesday, about 26 hours after being admitted to an Ebola treatment center supported by MSF, the organization said. on Twitter.
Officials from the World Health Organization (WHO) fear the arrival of Ebola in the city for months. Goma is home to a highly mobile population of over one million people, which increases the risk of spreading the disease.
"This is an event we planned for, which is why we are doing intensive preparation work in Goma so that any new cases are identified and addressed immediately," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, chief executive of WHO.
More than 5,000 health workers have been vaccinated against Ebola in the city and health centers have been trained and equipped to improve infection prevention and control, he said.
Controls at border crossing points have been strengthened and 24-hour surveillance has been established at the airport, Ghebreyesus added.
The WHO declared the latest outbreak of Ebola "sanitary emergency of international importance" on June 17, a day after the death of the first person diagnosed in Goma. This patient was a pastor who had left South Kivu to evangelize in Butembo, a center of the current Ebola outbreak.
Ghebreyesus said that there was no indication that the second victim was related to the first case.
WHO officials described the latest victim as a 46-year-old miner working in Ituri province, north of Goma. Margaret Harris, a WHO spokesperson in Goma, told CNN on Wednesday by telephone about her symptoms of the Ebola virus after returning home earlier this month.
The health investigators could not interview this man before his death because he was very sick when he was admitted, Harris said. The investigators are now trying to track the movements of the man to identify where he contracted the disease and who might have been exposed.
"We presume that, on his way to Goma, he has crossed a transmission zone," Harris said.
The family members of this man have been vaccinated against Ebola. They are monitored by medical staff who carry out daily checks, she said.
"He was in the symptomatic community for a good time, a lot longer than we wanted to see people there," Harris said.
Jean-Jacques Muyembe Tamfum, head of the national research institute and national teams fighting Ebola, said Tuesday at a press conference that workers had been deployed to disinfect the victim's home and the health center that he was crossing.
"We have already established a list of high-risk contacts and as soon as [Wednesday] we will start to draw up a list of contacts and … these contacts will be vaccinated, "he said.
The rare but deadly Ebola virus disease can include fever, headache, muscle aches, vomiting, diarrhea and unexplained bleeding. The virus was first identified in 1976, when epidemics occurred near the Ebola River in the DRC.
Scientists believe that the virus first infected humans through close contact with an infected animal, such as a bat, and then that it was spread from one person to the other.
The virus is transmitted between humans through direct contact with the body fluids of an infected person, including infected blood, stool or vomit, or through direct contact with contaminated objects, such as needles and syringes.
The current Ebola outbreak in the DRC It is the second-most deadly in history, overtaken by only one in West Africa in 2014, when the disease killed more than 11,000 people, according to WHO.
To mark the first anniversary of the declaration of the epidemic, UN agencies released a joint statement Wednesday in which it was reported more than 2,600 confirmed cases, including more than 1,800 deaths, in parts of the provinces of Ituri and North Kivu in the DRC.
"Nearly one in three is a child," the agencies said in a statement.
Correction: This article has been revised to indicate that Tamfum runs the National Ebola Team, and not the WHO Response Team for the Ebola virus.
Madison Park and Chelsea J. Carter of CNN contributed to this report.
The-CNN-Wire ™ and © 2019 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.
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