The death toll from the year-long Ebola outbreak in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has topped 2,000, according to government data released on Friday, which also showed the number of confirmed cases had surpassed 3,000.
The outbreak, which was officially declared in August of last year, is the second deadliest on record behind the 2013-2016 epidemics in West Africa that killed more than 11,300 people.
Uganda, meanwhile, reported another fatal case of Ebola after a nine-year-old girl who crossed the border from neighbouring DRC and tested positive for the disease died on Thursday evening.
This is Congo’s 10th Ebola outbreak, but it is the first in the densely forested hillside provinces of North Kivu and Ituri, where militia-led violence and ethnic killing have undermined security in certain areas for decades.
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