The United Nations on Tuesday confirmed five cases of the deadly Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to dpa. The World Health Organization (WHO) said it had no details of how many people were affected by the virus, which causes bleeding and is fatal in more than 80 per cent of cases. It had been identified in western Kasai in the centre of the country. WHO also confirmed that another deadly and highly infectious virus was at work in the region which had now possibly been identified as Shigella, which causes fever, headaches, pains and vomiting. The virus, then unidentified, had prompted a warning by WHO at the end of August and it was not clear which one was responsible for a number of deaths in the region. "This is now to be investigated more intensively to find out whether it is a combination of the two diseases, Ebola and Shigella, and whether one or the other is prevalent, Ebola being the most dangerous," said a WHO spokeswoman. WHO had its own team in place and had appealed for experts to come forward via its Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network to help tackle the outbreak. The priority now was to identify the first cases and anyone who had been in contact with them, isolate the victims and assist families with safe burial to avoid spreading the disease further. There had been 1,200 deaths from Ebola out of 1,850 cases in African countries since 1976, not including these latest cases, according to WHO figures.
