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An Ebola virus outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo last month has led Roman Catholics to stop administering several sacraments temporarily in an attempt to keep the deadly disease from spreading. Catholics will not be baptized, confirmed, ordained or anointed until further notice in the country’s northwestern regions hardest hit by the outbreak, which has claimed at least 25 lives since May 8, when the outbreak was first confirmed. The new regulations cover the Archdiocese of Mbandaka-Bikoro, which spans about 59,000 miles. Some 650,000 of the region’s 1.2 million residents are Catholics, according to church statistics. Archbishop Fridolin Ambongo...

Another person has died in Congo of a confirmed case of Ebola, bringing the number of fatalities from the latest outbreak to 12, the country’s health ministry said Sunday. The death happened in Iboko, a rural area in northwestern Equateur province, the health ministry said in a statement. There are also four new suspected cases in the province, the statement reported. Congo now has 35 confirmed Ebola cases. Health workers have identified people who have been in contact with the patients in the confirmed Ebola cases in three areas in Equateur province, Iboko, rural Bikoro and Mbandaka, the provincial capital...

Three patients escaped from quarantine in the city of Mbandaka in north western Democratic Republic of Congo. Two of the three have been found dead, while a third patient has been found alive. Medecins Sans Frontieres' (MSF) mission in the city confirmed the incident as they work to treat cases of Ebola. The death toll of the outbreak has reached 27 as health chiefs crackdown on the virus. World Health Organisation bosses have previously warned spread in the city could mean a repeat of the 2014 outbreak – which killed over 11,000. … WHO have shipped more than 8,600 vaccines...

In all eight of the previous known Ebola outbreaks in Congo, the virus has been contained within remote jungle villages or relatively small towns, where isolated populations are less likely to spread the disease. But the Congo River is effectively the region’s highway system. Barges and boats travel from Kisangani in the east through major cities including Bumba, Mbandaka — and eventually Kinshasa, the capital of Congo and home to more than 11 million people, as well as Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo. “The Congo River connects three national capitals and multiple other large cities,” said Jeremy...

Four new cases have been confirmed as Ebola, said the health ministry in a statement released early Sunday. A total of 46 cases of hemorrhagic fever have been reported in the current outbreak, including 21 confirmed cases of Ebola, 21 probable and four suspected.

Among the dead were three health-care workers. Health officials are following up with nearly 400 people identified as contacts of Ebola patients. The global health agency announced last week its plans to send the vaccine, developed in 2016 by the pharmaceutical company Merck. Health officials hope that the vaccine, which was given to people in Guinea in West Africa during a trial in 2015, could be a game-changer in preventing Ebola from spreading, The Washington Post’s Siobhán O’Grady wrote last week. Among the 5,837 people who received the vaccine, called rVSV-ZEBOV, no one came down with Ebola 10 days after...

The WHO said on Friday it hopes to deploy an experimental Ebola vaccine to tackle an outbreak... The Democratic Republic of Congo and U.N. agencies began deploying emergency teams of specialists over the weekend to try to prevent the spread of an Ebola epidemic suspected to have infected more than 30 people [including health care workers]... this epidemic’s proximity to the Congo River, a major transport route and lifeline both to Congo’s capital Kinshasa and to neighboring Congo Republic’s capital Brazzaville, makes it more likely the virus could break out into a wider area.

Seventeen people in northwest Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have died from Ebola, the health ministry said on Tuesday, describing the fresh outbreak as a "public health emergency with international impact." "Twenty-one cases of fever with haemorrhagic indications and 17 deaths" have been recorded in Equateur province, it said, citing a notification to the ministry as of May 3. It is the DRC's ninth known outbreak of Ebola since 1976, when the deady viral disease was first identified in then-Zaire by a Belgian-led team.

Officials at the Texas Biomedical Research Institute say the fourth baboon who escaped from their facility Saturday has been captured. All four baboons have been checked by veterinary staff and are well, a news release reports. No details were given on where the baboon was caught... Officials did not say how the animals escaped, only that the four were able to get past perimeter fencing at the institute. Witnesses quickly took to to social media to report baboons on the loose after catching sight of the runaways near Northwest Loop 410 and West Military Drive. Jannell Bouton, 26, snapped photos...

HEALTH bosses have confirmed they are facing an outbreak of the “eye-bleeding fever” after four people died of the suspected disease in weeks. Uganda’s health ministry has today finally admitted it is facing the risk of a large-scale explosion of the viral hemorrhagic fever (VHF). VHF causes victims to suffer a burning fever before beginning to bleed from orifices including their eyes, anuses and mouths. It comes after a girl, nine, was reportedly killed by the infection Uganda, and three people died in neighbouring South Sudan of similar symptoms. Uganda health minster Sarah Opendi confirmed emergency response teams are now...

The disease, known as Marburg virus disease (MVD), is similar to Ebola and can be lethal in up to 90 per cent of cases. Emergency screening has begun at the Kenya-Uganda border in Turkana after three members of the same family died of the disease in Uganda. The outbreak is thought to have started in September when a man in his 30s, who worked as a game hunter and lived near a cave with a heavy presence of bats, was admitted to a local health centre with a high fever, vomiting and diarrhoea. Several hundred people are believed to have...

The Red Cross has uncovered several cases of fraud by officials during efforts to combat the Ebola outbreak that struck West Africa in 2014-2016, estimating losses of $6 million (€5.2 million). In a statement, the Geneva-based International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said it was “outraged”, and said it would “ensure any staff involved are held to account.” The Ebola virus killed more than 11,300 people and infected an estimated 29,000, mainly in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. The IFRC said the operations set up to contain the outbreak “were among the most complex in recent...

Last week three suspected Ebola infections were detected in a remote region of the Congo. Since then, World Health Organization officials have been scrambling to contain the virus. Their efforts appear to have failed. The contagion continues to spread, and though it’s nowhere near the 11,000 people who were infected during the outbreak in 2014, the infection rate has spiked over 800% in just the last seven days, with at least nine new cases reported in the last 24 hours: The number of suspected cases of Ebola has risen to 29 from nine in less than a week in an...

The number of suspected cases of Ebola has risen to 29 from nine in less than a week in an isolated part of Democratic Republic of Congo, where three people have died from the disease since April 22, the World Health Organization said on Thursday. The W.H.O. was criticized for responding too slowly to an outbreak in West Africa in 2014 that left more than 11,000 people dead, and Dr. Peter Salama, the executive director of the organization’s health emergencies program, said at a briefing that it was essential to “never, ever underestimate Ebola” and to “make sure we have...

A new Ebola epidemic has been declared in the Democratic Republic of Congo after the deaths of three people thought to be linked to the virus. The country’s health ministry confirmed one person has tested positive for the virus. The World Health Organisation confirmed that the DR Congo had informed them of a lab-confirmed case of the disease " On 11 May 2017, the Min of Health of the Democratic Republic of the Congo notified WHO & partners of a lab-confirmed case of #Ebola#DRC — WHO (@WHO) May 12, 2017 " The case was confirmed from tests on nine people...

In a refreshing move, the Trump administration is eliminating one of Barack Obama’s many outrageous amnesty initiatives, this one involving illegal immigrants from African countries affected by the Ebola virus a few years ago. The Ebola amnesty scandal got buried in the hoopla of the administration’s broad executive order protecting millions of illegal alien Mexicans and Central Americans, but it was just as alarming. Launched in 2014, the Ebola reprieve was issued separately—and quietly—via a Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a humanitarian program that’s supposed to be short-term. Under the plan, the administration designated Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone for TPS...

CoverGirl’s prized cover boy is under fire after tweeting that he's afraid to go to Africa for fear of contracting Ebola. Teen makeup artist James Charles became the darling of the internet and the press after CoverGirl announced their gender-stereotype-busting “first male CoverGirl” in October. Now Charles is under fire for his alleged “anti-blackness.” On Thursday, Affinity Magazine reported Charles tweeted that he was afraid of getting Ebola from traveling to Africa:

The analysis, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows nearly two thirds of cases (61%) were caused by 3% of infected people. The young and old were more likely to have been "super-spreaders". It is hoped understanding their role in spreading the infection will help contain the next outbreak. ... The study looked at cases in and around the capital of Sierra Leone, Freetown. By looking at the pattern of where and when cases emerged, the researchers could tell how many people each infected person was passing the deadly virus onto. Prof Steven Riley, one of the...

People who survive Ebola may still battle debilitating health problems a year after being declared infection-free, according to an ongoing trial in Guinea which highlighted the need for patient followup. Three-quarters of survivors had post-Ebola symptoms when they enrolled for the trial about a year, on average, after they were discharged from hospital, researchers reported Saturday. Eighteen percent experienced eye problems, including eight individuals who went blind, a team wrote in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.br> Two percent—19 people—were deaf. This is the largest and longest-running assessment of Ebola survivors to date. Nearly one in four participants, the study said, suffered...

Scientists battling the deadly Ebola virus are poised for a breakthrough in the new year after an experimental vaccine shot proved to be 100-percent effective during a trial in West Africa and received fast-track status from the Food and Drug Administration.