DR Congo's South Kivu province reports first confirmed Ebola cases

BUKAVU, DR Congo -- Health authorities of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) on Friday confirmed the first two cases of Ebola in the Mwenga Health Zone in Bukavu city, South Kivu province, which borders Rwanda and Burundi.

According to a statement from the nation's coordination team in charge of Ebola response, the two cases were a 24-year-old woman and her seven-month-old baby, who resided in a host family in the Beni Health Zone, Mabolio.

The woman had been listed earlier as a high-risk contact of a family member who was confirmed to be an Ebola case last month in Beni.

The statement added that more than 120 contacts are already listed and the on-site response team's mission is supporting the Mwenga Health Zone in search of other contacts in the coming week.

"We want to reassure the population that the response teams are hard at work to carry out all public health actions around the case, and urge it to collaborate fully with our teams," said Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe, director of the National Institute for Biomedical Research, in a statement.

"We reassure neighboring countries that all steps are being taken to strengthen surveillance at points of entry and health control," he added.

Since the beginning of the Ebola outbreak one year ago, the cumulative number of cases is 2,852, of which 2,758 are confirmed and 94 probable. In total there were 1,913 deaths of which 1,819 were confirmed. There are also 848 people healed, according to the latest report from the country's health ministry.