2 Ebola patients die after escaping quarantine in Congo

By Staff Reuters

In this photo taken Sunday, May 20, 2018, a team from Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) dons protective clothing and equipment as they prepare to treat Ebola patients in an isolation ward of Mbandaka hospital in Congo. Congo's health ministry announced Tuesday, May 22, 2018 six new confirmed cases of the Ebola virus and two new suspected cases while a vaccination effort enters its second day.

Louise Annaud/Medecins Sans Frontieres via AP

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Two of three Ebola patients who escaped quarantine in the Congo river port city of Mbandaka have died, the head of medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres’ (MSF) mission in the city said on Wednesday.

The third patient was found alive and is currently under observation by MSF and the World Health Organization, Henri Gray said.

On Tuesday, Congo’s health ministry announced six new confirmed Ebola cases and two new suspected cases as vaccinations entered the second day in an effort to contain the deadly virus in a city of more than one million.

Aid agencies struggling to combat latest outbreak of the Ebola Virus in Congo

There are now 28 confirmed Ebola cases in the country —, 21 probable ones and two suspected, the health ministry said.

The vaccine, provided by U.S. company Merck, is still in the test stages but it was effective toward the end of the Ebola epidemic that killed more than 11,300 people in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia from 2014 to 2016.

A major challenge will be keeping the vaccines cold in this vast, impoverished, tropical country where infrastructure is poor.

— With files from the Associated Press

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