Geneva — The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has spread to a city, the World Health Organisation (WHO) says, fuelling concern that the deadly virus may prove tougher to contain. The fresh outbreak, publicly declared on May 8 with 23 deaths so far, had previously been confined to a very remote, rural area in Equateur Province in the northwest of the country. But the UN’s health agency confirmed on Thursday that an Ebola case had been recorded in the city of Mbandaka, which lies about 150km from the Bikoro area where the outbreak originated. "This is a concerning development," WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement. Last week, a top WHO official warned that if the virus reached Mbandaka, the DRC could be confronted with yet another Ebola crisis. The city’s population has been variously estimated at between 700,000 and 1.2-million. "If we see a town of that size infected with Ebola, then we are going to have a major urban outbreak,"...
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