Some 30 suspected cases of the Ebola virus have been admitted to an isolation unit in the Congo, where an outbreak of the disease has infected at least 17 people in recent months, the medical charity Doctors Without Borders said Friday, according to dpa. The World Health Organization this week confirmed six deaths were due to the fatal disease in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which broke out in the West Kasai province in April. Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, said three patients had died in an isolation unit last weekend and two more were severely ill. MSF's team in Kampungu, the epicentre of the disease, is made up of 65 people, who were assisting in properly burying those killed by the disease to prevent its spreading as well as isolating those suspected to be infected. The total number of Ebola cases is at 17, according the WHO, but MSF said "this doesn't necessarily mean that the outbreak is spreading, since the samples were taken more than 10 days ago." Some 400 people have become ill and 174 died in the province since April, but other diseases including typhoid fever and the dysentery virus Shigella have been reported. Ebola, which causes haemorrhaging and fever and proves fatal in 50 to 90 per cent of cases, is the most deadly of the diseases identified in the Congo so far.
