Posted on 12/08/2003 4:34:35 PM PST by Neuromancer
BRAZZAVILLE, Dec 8 (Reuters) - An outbreak of the Ebola virus has killed 29 people in northwestern Congo Republic, where the disease killed 120 earlier this year, a senior official at the country's health ministry said on Monday.
"Right now the death toll in Mbomo is 29," Bernard Mantele told Reuters, adding that the percentage of people developing the disease after coming into contact with an infected person was also rising. State television said late last month 164 people had come into contact with the disease around Mbomo, some 700 km (440 miles) northwest of the central African country's capital Brazzaville and just across the border from Gabon.
Teams from the health ministry, the World Health Organisation and aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres have been sent to the Mbomo region, known as Cuvette-Ouest, to try to break the chain of contamination.
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