CRI听力:DR Congo Declares Ebola Outbreak

Reporter:
Officials have confirmed the outbreak, but say the epidemic is not linked to the cases in West Africa.

Kabange Numbi is Congo's health minister.

"I declare an Ebola epidemic in the region of Djera, in the territory of Boende in the province of Equateur, Democratic Republic of Congo. This epidemic doesn't have any link to that which is now happening in West Africa, and it's the seventh epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo since the outbreak in Yambukou in 1976 in the same Equateur province."

So far, 13 people have died.

Numbi says the disease is a different strain of Ebola to that in West Africa.

Authorities have set up a quarantine zone to contain the disease and provide free health treatment for the duration of the epidemic.

The Djera region is about 1,200 kilometers north of the capital Kinshasa.

Currently, a 19-member Chinese medical team is working in the Sino-Congolese Friendship Hospital in Kinshasa.

The team has been treating local patients and Chinese nationals for years.

Zhang Shunying, the team leader, says an emergency plan has been set up.

"We have already had an emergency plan in hand. The plan outlines the responses we will take if Ebola cases are found in the hospital and in our camp."

Zhang says the team is also providing training to local Chinese nationals on how to protect themselves against the disease.

In West Africa, in a bid to contain an Ebola outbreak, Sierra Leone's parliament has made the harboring of Ebola victims a crime punishable by two years' jail.

The World Health Organization has warned that the hiding of victims and existence of shadow zones where medics can not go has concealed the true scale of the epidemic.

The country's minister of health also admits that recent flight cancellations are a "huge setback" in the fight against the Ebola outbreak.

Sierra Leone's Minister of Health and Sanitation Miatta Kargb:

"With all the cancellations, the flight cancellations to Sierra Leone, and in the Mano River Union, this is a challenge for us because most of our supplies do come in through aircrafts and the commercial flights that come into the country by the way. So the cancellation of commercial flights has created a huge setback for us in the fight against Ebola."

Senegal, Cote D'Ivoire, Gabon, Cameroon and South Africa have imposed bans on flights to and from countries affected by Ebola.

Earlier, a British medical worker in Sierra Leone was sent back to the UK after becoming the first Briton infected during the Ebola epidemic in West Africa.

So far, over 1,400 people have died from the disease.

The WHO has said the speed and extent of the outbreak has been uNPRecedented.

For CRI, I'm Yu Yang.