France confirms first Ebola case in doctor who had worked in DRC

Health workers tend to an Ebola patient in the DRC province of Ituri. The doctor in the French case had been on a humanitarian mission in the area. Photograph: Moses Sawasawa/AP View image in fullscreen Health workers tend to an Ebola patient in the DRC province of Ituri. The doctor in the French case had been on a humanitarian mission in the area. Photograph: Moses Sawasawa/AP France confirms first Ebola case in doctor who had worked in DRC French health ministry says patient’s contacts are being traced and that risk to European public is very low The first case of Ebola has been confirmed in France, the country’s health ministry has said, in a doctor who had returned from a humanitarian mission to an area affected by the outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo . The patient was transferred to a specialist facility and was in a stable condition, the ministry said in a statement . “All precautionary measures, including the patient’s isolation, were taken upon his arrival in the country, with transfer to the hospital under secure conditions to prevent any risk of contamination.” Authorities are tracing the patient’s contacts, who will have to isolate at home for 21 days. The ministry said the risk to the general European public was very low. The outbreak is centred on Ituri province in north-eastern DRC, where authorities are battling to contain the spread of the virus. There had been 1,048 confirmed cases and 267 deaths as of 21 June, according to the DRC health ministry’s latest data , while 112 people have recovered. Neighbouring Uganda has recorded 20 cases and two deaths. The World Health Organization declared the outbreak on 15 May , and two days later declared a public health emergency of international concern . Experts believe the virus was circulating in the DRC undetected for weeks before, however, and that the scale of the outbreak there is likely to be much larger than the confirmed cases suggest. The humanitarian response has been complicated by aid cuts and conflict in North and South Kivu provinces, to the south of Ituri, where the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group operates and Ebola cases have also been detected. Ebola one month on: will the latest outbreak in DRC become the most deadly yet? Read more The outbreak had the largest number of confirmed cases within the first month of any Ebola outbreak, the WHO official Abdirahman Mahamud said on Tuesday. Mahamud said local resistance to the response in DRC, which had included hospitals and treatment centres being burned down, was waning. “More and more communities are aware of the risk of Ebola and are asking for tools to support and ​protect themselves,” he said. The current strain of the disease is the rare Bundibugyo virus, which has no vaccine or approved treatment. Modelling by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested the outbreak could be the biggest on record. The previous largest outbreak was in west Africa from 2014 to 2016, during which more than 28,