More than 1,000 people have died from Ebola in eastern Congo since August, the country’s health minister said Friday as hostility toward health workers continues to hamper efforts to contain the second-deadliest outbreak of the virus.
Health Minister Oly Ilunga told The Associated Press that four deaths in the outbreak’s epicenter of Katwa helped push the death toll to 1,008. Two more deaths were reported in the city of Butembo.
The outbreak declared almost nine months ago already had caused the most deaths behind the 2014-2016 outbreak in West Africa’s Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia that killed more than 11,000 people.