The World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared a public health emergency following an outbreak of Ebola in Africa.
Ebola is a highly infectious disease which spreads through direct contact with infected bodily fluids.
There is no vaccine for the strain behind this outbreak.
So far, 80 people are suspected to have died of the disease in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and two cases have been confirmed in Uganda.
Ebola
Ebola is a viral disease that can spread to humans through close contact with the blood or other bodily fluids of infected animals.
The virus can also spread from person to person through direct contact with bodily fluids.
The average death rate for outbreaks of Ebola is 50%.
While there are approved vaccines for Ebola, there is currently no vaccine available for the strain linked to the latest outbreak.
The disease was first identified in 1976 in remote villages in Central Africa near tropical rainforests.
The most significant Ebola outbreak occurred between 2014 and 2016, when the virus spread across several West African countries.
More cases and deaths were recorded during that two-year period than in all previous known outbreaks combined.
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Australia has never confirmed a case of Ebola.
Outbreak
As of this weekend, the World Health Organisation has reported Ebola cases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Uganda.
In the DRC (purple), there have been eight confirmed cases, almost 250 suspected cases and around 80 suspected deaths.
In Uganda (yellow), two confirmed cases were reported within 24 hours of each other. The cases were unrelated and involved people who had travelled from the DRC.
The WHO has declared the outbreak an emergency “of international concern,” but says it “does not meet the criteria” of a pandemic.
The UN agency has advised against border closures and restrictions on travel and trade.
It says those measures are often driven “out of fear and have no basis in science,” and “push the movement of people and goods to informal border crossings that are not monitored, thus increasing the chances of the spread of disease.”
The DRC continues to be destabilised by ongoing violent conflict dating back to the late 1990s and early 2000s, related to ethnic tensions in the region.
It is rich in natural resources,
but its people live in extreme poverty, mainly due to hundreds of years of colonisation, conflict and exploitation.
Public health responses to this month’s outbreak could be impacted by both of these factors.
