The Ministry of Health of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has on 16 February 2009 declared the end of the Ebola epidemic in the Mweka and Luebo health zones in the Province of Kasai Occidental . The last person to be infected by the virus died on 1 January 2009. This is more than double the maximum incubation period (42 days) for Ebola.
As of today, the health authorities have reported a total of 32 cases, including 15 deaths from Ebola. These 32 cases include confirmed, probable and suspect cases. During this outbreak, the Ebola virus was confirmed by laboratory tests at the Institut National de Recherches Biologiques (INRB) in Kinshasa, the Centre International de Recherches Médicales de Franceville (CIRMF) in Gabon, and the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), South Africa.
The WHO Country Office, Regional Office and Headquarters supported the MoH in Kinshasa and in the field at the location of the outbreak. The international response to the outbreak also involved UNICEF, the United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC), and the World Food Programme (WFP), as well as support from Caritas (Belgium), and the Congolese (DRC) Red Cross, together with partners in the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN), including the National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) of the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), CIRMF, and NICD, and Médecins Sans Frontières (Belgium).
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