Suspected Ebola death on boat heading for DR Congo capital

A suspected Ebola death has been reported on a boat heading for Kinshasa, which has so far avoided the outbreak raging in DR Congo's east and northeast, authorities said Thursday.

Ebola, which spreads through contact with bodily fluids and causes haemorrhagic fever, has killed at least 1,800 people out of the nearly 4,000 confirmed to have become infected in the Democratic Republic of Congo since the authorities officially declared an outbreak on May 15.

The virus has spread across five provinces in the vast country's mineral-rich, conflict-plagued east and northeast, where the state's presence is weak and healthcare infrastructure is largely inadequate

On Thursday, the government said a passenger had died on board a vessel travelling towards the sprawling capital -- home to 17 million people -- from the northeastern province of Tshopo, where Ebola cases have been reported.

"A mobile laboratory has been set up to test all the passengers on the vessel. Security measures have been put in place to isolate the vessel on the river, 65 kilometres (40 miles) from Kinshasa," government spokesman Patrick Muyaya said in a post on X.

Muyaya said the person was more than 1,200 km from Kinshasa when they died.

Health Minister Samuel Roger Kamba said authorities had followed the boat and held it 65 km from Kinshasa.

"There have been no other deaths on the boat," he said.

The latest outbreak of Ebola -- which can cause vomiting, diarrhoea, impaired kidney or liver functions and internal bleeding -- was first detected in the northeastern province of Ituri and has spread to Nord-Kivu, Sud-Kivu, Haut-Uele and Tshopo, as well as to neighbouring Uganda.

The World Health Organisation said in May the first "currently known suspected case" actually dated back to April 24, three weeks before the DRC authorities' official announcement.

On Wednesday, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the outbreak was "spreading faster than our scale-up of the response, with new cases doubling in some hotspots over the past week alone".

"We must urgently and massively scale up all our efforts," he said, urging the authorities to better protect frontline health workers.

The struggle to contain the outbreak has been laid bare in Ituri, the epicentre, where staff at several Ebola treatment centres have protested in recent weeks over unpaid government allowances

This is the DRC's 17th declared outbreak of Ebola.

The current epidemic is caused by the Bundibugyo strain, for which there is as yet neither a vaccine nor a treatment.

The virus has killed more than 15,000 people in Africa over the past 50 years.