DRC gets ready to roll out Ebola vaccinations in eastern Congo.

An Ebola vaccination campaign will start in the Congolese city of Beni on Thursday after a new virus case was confirmed this week, the World Health Organiaation said on Wednesday.

Reuters.

Vaccine doses have arrived in Beni, east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The latest confirmed Ebola case has been genetically linked to a 2018-2020 outbreak in North Kivu and Ituri provinces, which claimed nearly 2,300 lives.

Last year, six people were killed in another Ebola flare-up from that same outbreak.

A World Health Organisation (WHO) spokesperson told Reuters that the organisation had provided vaccines and that vaccinations would start on Thursday.

Congo's dense tropical forests are a natural reservoir for the Ebola virus, which causes fever, body aches, and diarrhoea. The virus can linger in the body of survivors only to resurface years later.

The vast central African country has recorded 14 outbreaks since 1976. The 2018-2020 outbreak in the east was Congo's largest and the second largest ever recorded, with nearly 3,500 total cases.

Congo's most recent outbreak was in northwest Equateur province. It was declared over in July after five deaths.

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