Ebola spreads to high-risk area of Congo, WHO says

Congo'sEbola outbreak has spread southwards into an area with highsecurity risks, the World Health Organization said.

The outbreak, the country's worst, has killed 439 of the 713people believed to have caught the disease. The fight againstEbola depends on tracing people who may have had contact withthe disease and could fall ill and spread it further.

But the outbreak in a region of Congo with frequent fightingmakes it hard for health workers to move around and monitorpotential sufferers and to spread messages about how to avoidbecoming sick.

Most of the cases since the start of the year have been inKatwa health zone, where the WHO said Ebola workers had faced"pockets of community mistrust" and most people falling ill werenot on lists of people suspected of coming into contact withEbola.

"The outbreak has also extended southwards to Kayina healthzone, a high security risk area," the WHO said in its statementlate on Thursday. There have been five cases in Kayina, whichlies between the main outbreak zone and the major city of Goma,which is close to the Rwandan border.

The WHO said that after running an Ebola simulation exercisein Rwanda, it was sending a team to beef up the country'spreparedness and to vaccinate health workers who would be firstto come into contact with Ebola if it spread across the border.