WHO confirms ebola outbreak in south Sudan, four dead

NAIROBI, May 24 (AFP) — An outbreak of the deadly ebola virus has killed four people in south sudan, where health experts are scrambling to contain the disease, the World Health Organisation (WHO) confirmed.

“This is ebola. We cannot confirm which strain,” WHO technical officer Athalia Christie told AFP by phone from her Nairobi office.

Different varieties of the ebola virus, whose victims bleed to death from bodily orifices after their internal organs liquify, have different mortality rates, ranging from 50 to 90 percent.

On Friday, the WHO reported an outbreak of an “ebola-like” virus in Yambio County of south Sudan’s Western Equatoria region.

That the disease was indeed ebola, rather than other less deadly forms of viral haemarrhogic fever, was confirmed by laboratory tests conducted by the Centres for Disease Control and the Kenya Medical Research Institute, said Christie.

The number of “probable cases” of ebola in Yambio is 19, she said, adding that 118 people who had come into concact with these probable cases were being chased up for checking.