Estimated DR Congo Ebola death toll rises sharply to at least 131

The toll from the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has risen to an estimated 131 deaths from 513 suspected cases, Health Minister Samuel Roger Kamba said.

The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) has declared the outbreak a Continental Public Health Emergency, in a statement late Monday.

Declaring a continental emergency empowers the Africa CDC, based in Ethiopia, to mobilise extra resources including emergency response teams and surveillance operations. 

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"Africa CDC expresses deep concern about the high risk of regional spread due to intense cross-border population movements, mobility related to mining activities, insecurity in affected areas, weak infection prevention and control measures... and the proximity of affected areas to Rwanda and South Sudan," it said.

The previous figures from the epidemic in the country's east, which the World Health Organization has declared an international health emergency, gave a total of 91 dead out of 350 suspected cases.

No vaccine or treatment exists for the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola behind the latest outbreak of the deadly disease, which has killed more than 15,000 people in Africa in the past half century.

"We have recorded roughly 131 deaths in total and we have around 513 suspected cases," Samuel Roger Kamba told Congolese national television overnight.

Read moreWhat we know about the deadly new Ebola outbreak in DR Congo

He however cautioned that the toll was an estimate and further research was needed to confirm whether all 131 suspected deaths were indeed linked to Ebola.

The outbreak's epicentre is in the northeastern Ituri province on the border with Uganda and South Sudan, whose status as a gold-mining hub leads to people regularly crisscrossing the region.

The virus has already spread into neighbouring provinces, as well as beyond the DRC's borders.

Suspected cases have been reported in the commercial hub of Butembo in neighbouring North Kivu province, some 200 kilometres away from the epidemic's ground zero, Kamba said, without giving further details.

Another case has been recorded in Goma, a key provincial capital currently in the hands of the Rwanda-backed AFC/M23 militia.

"Unfortunately, the alert was slow to circulate within the community, because people thought it was a mystical illness, and so, as a result, the sick were not taken to the hospital," Kamba said.

As few samples have been able to be tested in laboratories to date, the assessments are based mainly on suspected cases.

(FRANCE with AFP)