Two new deaths from Ebola and seven new confirmed cases have been recorded in Democratic Republic of Congo, the health ministry said on Tuesday.
One of the deaths occurred in the provincial capital of Mbandaka, according to a daily bulletin. A nurse also died in the village of Bikoro, where the outbreak was first detected, ministry spokeswoman Jessica Ilunga told Reuters.
The seven new confirmed cases were registered in Bikoro, the ministry said. The outbreak is believed to have killed at least 27 people so far.
Congo has faced nine outbreaks of the hemmorhagic fever since it was discovered along the country’s Ebola river in 1976. The government and international partners have deployed significant resources to the northwestern Equateur province in a bid to quickly contain its spread.
Health officials administered an experimental vaccine on Monday to 33 medical workers and Mbandaka residents, World Health Organization (WHO) spokesman Tarik Jasarevic told reporters in Geneva.
The WHO said vaccine manufacturer Merck has provided it with 8,640 doses of the vaccine and an additional 8,000 doses are expected to be available in the coming days.
But despite the relative familiarity of Congolese with the disease, health officials face resistance to some of their public messaging.
At the central market in Mbandaka, where vendors in colourful fabrics hawk smoked monkeys, some residents said they were unmoved by warnings not to consume bush meat.
“Despite your Ebola stories, we buy and eat monkey meat,” said one woman named Carine, a mother of eight children. “We have eaten that since forever. That is not going to change today. Ebola, that’s in Bikoro.”
Officials, however, are particularly concerned by the disease’s presence in Mbandaka, a crowded trading hub on the Congo River with road, water and air links to Congo’s capital, Kinshasa.
Four cases have been confirmed in the city’s Wanganta neighbourhood and two more cases are suspected.
“The risk of spreading within the country and to neighbouring nations remains real,” said Dr Fatoumata Nafo-Traoré of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. “One of the lessons we learned in our response to other deadly Ebola outbreaks is that complacency can kill.”
More than 11,300 people died in an Ebola outbreak in the West African countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone between 2013 and 2016, during which health authorities were widely criticised for their slow response.