Six new Ebola cases have been recorded in areas of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) controlled by AFC\/M23 rebels, the group said, days after the only previously known active \u200ccase in rebel-held territory was discharged.<\/p>\n
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The Rwanda-backed AFC\/M23 rebels control large parts of North and South Kivu provinces after staging a lightning offensive last year.<\/p>\n
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The rebels declared areas under their control Ebola-free in late June, having previously recorded only four \u2060cases, but a new case was confirmed in Kayna health zone in North Kivu in early September. That patient was discharged on Tuesday after spending 26 days at the Ebola treatment centre there.<\/p>\n
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Two new cases were detected in Kayna health zone and four in neighbouring Alimbongo health zone this Friday, the rebels said in a statement.<\/p>\n
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The two health zones are near Lubero, close to the \u200cfront \u2060line with government forces.<\/p>\n
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Epidemiological investigations showed the six cases were part of the same chain of transmission stemming from a case that came from the city of Butembo in government-held territory, according to the statement.<\/p>\n
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Four \u2060of the cases were identified through post-mortem testing of people who died in the community, while the other two patients are receiving treatment, the \u2060rebels said.<\/p>\n
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Efforts are underway to identify and trace contacts, the statement added.<\/p>\n
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The Ebola outbreak in eastern DRC was declared on May \u206015 and has now caused more than 4 000 deaths among 8 300 confirmed cases, according to government data released on Friday.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":47132,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[78,26],"class_list":["post-47131","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-featured","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Six new Ebola cases have been recorded in areas of eastern DRC controlled by AFC\/M23 rebels","published_date":"2026-10-02 18:39:16","news_description":"Six new Ebola cases have been recorded in areas of eastern DRC controlled by AFC\/M23 rebels","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/47131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/47131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47133,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/47131\/revisions\/47133"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=47131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}