International
DR Congo begins Ebola vaccination, as virus claims two lives
Health authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo are soon to begin a national Ebola vaccination campaign following the death of two people who died after contracting the virus in North Kivu province.
The decision to begin the national inoculation exercise came after a 60-year-old female farmer died of Ebola on Wednesday; six days after a 42-year-old woman had died in hospital of the virus near the city of Butembo.
Eugene Nzanzu Syalita, the province’s health minister, told the BBC in an interview on Thursday that the national inoculating exercise will begin with people in Masoya, a heath zone near Butembo.
READ ALSO: UK bans flights from Tanzania, DR Congo
“In total he said 161 people in that area had been traced who had had contact with the first patient,” she said.
Reports say samples are being studied in the capital, Kinshasa, to assess whether the cases are a new strain of the virus which was first discovered in DR Congo in 1976 and the country has suffered 11 outbreaks in total over the last four decades.
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