The Congolese government has declared a quarantine around an area in southeastern Congo after reports that at least 167 people have died in an outbreak of Ebola. There is some confusion going on at the moment because it appears that other diseases are also hitting at the same time. This is complicating the response to the outbreak.
The United States' Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a lab in Gabon confirmed the disease as a hemorrhagic fever, and specifically as Ebola, Health Minister Makwenge Kaput said on national television Monday. He did not provide further details.
According to WHO, five samples have tested positive for Ebola. About 40 more samples are pending.
At least 167 people have died in the affected region over about four months and nearly 400 have fallen ill, said Jean-Constatin Kanow, chief medical inspector for Congo's Kasai Oriental Province. Kinshasa, the capital, is 430 miles northwest of the area.
Some of the patients have improved after being given antibiotics, which would have no impact on Ebola, WHO experts said. The experts said that led them to suspect that shigella, a diarrhea-like disease, or typhoid has broken out in the same area. Symptoms for the three diseases are similar in early stages.
In the Congolese hospital where patients were being treated — a mud hut with a corrugated roof — patients are not being isolated. That means that patients who have shigella, which is not usually a fatal disease, might be mixed with Ebola patients, putting them at risk at catching the highly fatal fever.
Here's the Wikipedia entry on Ebola. Here is the official CDC page on the disease. This is one nasty virus.
