MikeLigalig.com

By Jeffrey Gettleman
www.iht.com

UN officials reported an outbreak of the lethal Ebola virus in central Congo on Tuesday, and they were rushing supplies and doctors into the region to contain the outbreak. But they said they did not know if Ebola was the cause of a mystery illness that has killed more than 100 people in the same area.

Gregory Hartl, a spokesman for the World Health Organization, said that five samples taken from sick people in the area had tested positive for Ebola but that another disease may be involved because other patients have been responding to antibiotic medicine, which would not work on a virus like Ebola.

"It wouldn't be surprising if something else was going on," Hartl said. "But because Ebola is involved, we have to be on high alert."

Ebola is fast-acting, highly contagious and is one of the deadliest diseases on the planet; it kills more than half of those who become infected. In severe cases, victims hemorrhage all over their body and bleed from body orifices before dying.

Hartl said the first UN teams arrived Sunday night with protective equipment. The affected area is dense rain forest between the towns of Mweka and Luebo, less than 320 kilometers, or 200 miles, from Kikwit, a city where another Ebola outbreak killed more than 200 people in 1995.

Congo is a poor, war-torn country the size of Western Europe with less than 500 kilometers of paved roads. Health officials have said that the infrastructure problems are both a hindrance and a help when battling a contagious disease.

Although it is difficult to bring medical supplies into the affected areas, the isolation of central Congo's towns also means that sick people cannot travel very far to infect others.

Officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta said that six or seven villages have been affected and that the first cases were reported in June. Approximately 300 people have gotten sick, and 120 people have died. Some of the patients had fevers of 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) and were vomiting blood. Most of the patients who died were 18 to 45 years old and succumbed to the illness four to five days after the first sign of symptoms.

Hartl said that some patients reported cholera-like symptoms, including acute diarrhea, and responded well to ciproflaxin, a popular antibiotic drug.

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