Ebola virus has killed nearly 2,000 people in Congo

Ebola appears to be under controlin the city of Goma in Congo but it has flared in other parts ofthe country, where aid workers are combating insecurity anddisinformation on social media, the World Health Organization(WHO) said on Friday.

The latest infections include the mysterious case of a womanin her 70s with no known history of travel or visitors, said Dr.Michael Ryan, head of WHO's health emergencies department.

The woman, in the remote village of Pinga in the northeastof Congo, may have caught the deadlyhemorrhagic fever by eating bushmeat or from another animalsource, he said.

Nearly 3,000 cases have been confirmed, including 1,965deaths, since the outbreak began a year ago, the second biggesttoll in the disease's history, the latest figures show.

"Over the last couple of weeks we have seen worryingextensions of the disease we have had a cluster of cases inMwenga, to the south of Bukavu, we have a case in Pinga whichis very difficult and inaccessible area to the northeast ofGoma," Ryan told a news conference.

Challenges of case

The case in Pinga, announced earlier this week by the healthministry, is in a militia-controlled territory of Walikale,hundreds of kilometers from where previous cases near the borderwith Uganda and Rwanda occurred.

"The challenge is this case has no apparent epidemiologiclinks to other cases or no recent travel outside or visitorsfrom outside," Ryan said.

"We obviously need to ensure that we haven't had anotherspillover from the forest or from a zoonotic or animal source.That is currently under investigation and there is furthertesting going on and genetic sequencing," he said.