WHO declares Ebola outbreak after patient infected with the virus dies in DRC

The United Nations' World Health Organisation has announced an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) after the Congolese Ministry of Health confirmed one person infected with the Ebola virus had died.

The last outbreak of Ebola in the DRC was in 2014, when dozens of people died. On 21 November 2014, the WHO announced declared the Ebola virus disease outbreak was over, 42 days after no new cases had been detected.

A spokesman for the UN's WHO on Friday (12 May) confirmed that one person, who tested positive to the virus in a laboratory, had died in the Central African nation.

"It [the case] is in a very remote zone, very forested, so we are a little lucky. We always take this very seriously," WHO spokesman Eric Kabambi told Reuters.

This outbreak was unrelated to the current outbreak of Ebola in West Africa.

The Ebola outbreak ravaged nations' economies leaving young people unemployed and homeless in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

Just 3% of people with Ebola were involved in about 61% of transmissions of the disease in the 2014-15 epidemic in West Africa.

These people have been termed 'superspreaders' and were often young people under the age of 15 or people over the age of 45. They were also more likely to have been treated at home rather than in a hospital.