Ebola outbreak: Three people die in Democratic Republic of Congo from deadly virus

'We always take this very seriously,' says World Health Organisation spokesman Eric Kabambi

The virus was discovered in the remote Bas-Uele province in the DRC's northest

A fresh outbreak of the Ebola virus has reportedly killed at least three people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The central African country's Ministry of Health said that one case had been confirmed after tests on nine people who came down with a hemorrhagic fever in Bas-Uele province in the northeast of the country on or after April 22.

Two of the sufferers had died, it added.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said in a tweet the Ministry had notified them of a lab confirmed case of the deadly virus.

In 2014, a three-month outbreak of Ebola in the DRC killed 49 people.

WHO spokesman Eric Kabambi said the outbreak was in "a very remote zone, very forested, so we are a little lucky."

He added: "We always take this very seriously."

Ebola is a deadly hemorrhagic fever that occasionally jumps to humans from animals including bats and monkeys. Without preventive measures, the virus can spread quickly between people and is fatal in up to 90 per cent of cases.

An experimental vaccine was recently developed that WHO says could be used in emergencies.

It was created after a 2014 outbreak of the disease in West Africa, which claimed the lives of thousands of people, becoming the deadliest occurrence of the disease since its discovery in 1976.

Researchers from the New England Journal of Medicine traced the outbreak to two-year-old Emile Ouamouno, who died in December 2013 in Meliandou, a small village in south-eastern Guinea.

It subsequently spread across Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, the US and Mali.

In a pattern that came to characterise the spread of the deadly virus, health workers trying to treat the disease were infected. They then spread it to nearby districts.

In June last year WHO declared Liberia free of active Ebola virus transmission. It was the last country still fighting the world's worst outbreak of the disease.