VIDEO: Healthcare workers celebrate as last patient leaves a DRC Ebola centre

A video surfaced on social media showing healthcare workers singing and dancing at an Ebola treatment centre in the DR Congo after the last patient completely recovered and departed from the hospital. Meanwhile, the latest Ebola outbreak traces back to the Doctors Without Borders-run centre in Mongbwalu.

The viral video shows healthcare workers dancing together with the last patient who was completely cured of the virus. Meanwhile, the deadly outbreak caused by the rare Bundibugyo strain of the Ebola virus has now crossed 10,000 cases with almost 5,000 lives lost across four African countries.

The latest Ebola outbreak traces back to the Doctors Without Borders-run facility in Mongbwalu. Driven by the rare Bundibugyo strain of the virus, it has now pushed past 10,000 cases and claimed close to 5,000 lives across four African nations.

First detected in mid-May, the outbreak has gone on to become the Democratic Republic of Congo’s largest and deadliest on record, overtaking even the 2018-2020 epidemic. As of early October, the country had recorded a crude case fatality ratio of roughly 48 per cent, nearly one in every two confirmed cases proving fatal.

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Kenya confirmed its first case earlier this month after a man who had travelled from Congo via Uganda died in Nairobi, with the country’s total eventually climbing to nine cases. Nigeria followed last week, becoming the fourth African nation to report an infection.

After Africa, France is the only country to have been confirmed as a case of Ebola in this outbreak, after a doctor returned from DR Congo in June. Meanwhile, amid rising concern about the virus, a top health expert has warned that Ebola will spread like COVID and could reach the UK if all continents don’t take required action.

Ebola was first identified in the DR Congo back in 1976, and the country is now experiencing the 17th outbreak of the disease. The current Ebola outbreak is of the Bundibugyo strain, which kills between 21 per cent and 50 per cent of those infected. People who contract it typically face muscle aches, high temperature, headache and sore throat, as well as vomiting and diarrhoea.

The virus spreads through direct exposure to bodily fluids, blood or vomit from infected individuals, for instance, or contact with the bodies of those who have died from it. No treatment currently exists, though researchers at Oxford University are racing to develop a vaccine that could be deployed should the outbreak escalate further.