Villagers flee blood tests as Ebola virus kills 48 in Republic of Congo

A suspected Ebola outbreak in the Republic of Congo has killed 48 people and infected many others, health officials said yesterday.

Medical experts in the west of the central African nation are taking blood tests amid "strong" suspicions that the disease is Ebola, said Joseph Mboussa, a spokesman for the Ministry of Health. He said results from the tests would be released soon, adding that "a lot of people had been sickened". A spokesman for the World Health Organisation (WHO), based in Geneva, said its specialists were taking part in the investigation.

Ebola is one of the world's deadliest viral diseases, causing rapid death through massive blood loss in up to 90 per cent of cases. The disease spreads through bodily fluids. Primates, a source of food for many central Africans, can also carry the infection.

Medical officials from the government and the WHO travelled to four villages in the Cuvette West region of the country last week after reports of a haemorrhagic fever outbreak reached the capital, Brazzaville, about 300 miles away. Authorities closed schools, government offices and churches across the region to prevent the disease spreading.

Mr Mboussa said villagers resisted initial attempts by medical examiners to take their blood as they believed the disease was a curse and the investigators were its agents. He said he feared villagers fleeing to other settlements could spread the disease. "The situation is serious as we can't control the movement of the population," he said.

Ebola killed 43 people in Republic of Congo between October 2001 and February 2002. The WHO says more than 1,000 people have died of Ebola since the virus was first identified in 1976 in Sudan and in a nearby region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire.

Ebola usually claims its victims rapidly, meaning the disease burns out before it can spread great distances.