WHO sets up Ebola vaccination sites in DR Congo

ANKARA

The World Health Organization (WHO) said Monday it has set up Ebola vaccination centers in Beni, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a day after a second virus-linked death in the country's northeastern region.

Pop-up vaccination sites were rapidly set up in Beni to vaccinate contacts linked to recent Ebola deaths in the area, the WHO African Region said on Twitter.

It said that the WHO and other partners were working to overcome resistance, and break the chain of transmission within the community.

For the last few weeks, no new case had been reported until last Friday when a 26-year-old man died of Ebola in the city of Beni.

Hence, the DRC government is unable to declare an end to the Ebola outbreak on Monday, as hoped, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO chief, said last week.

The recent outbreak, declared in August 2018, has claimed more than 2,200 lives, with 3,310 people testing positive.

Ebola -- a tropical fever, which first appeared in 1976 in Sudan and the DRC -- is transmitted to humans from wild animals.

It can also spread through contact with body fluids, infected people or of those who have succumbed to the virus.

Ebola caused global alarm in 2014 when the world's worst outbreak began in West Africa, killing more than 11,300 people and infecting an estimated 28,600 as it swept through Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.