剛果埃博拉病毒蔓延

The World Health Organization (WHO) said in a statement Friday that it is raising its assessment of the public health risk from Democratic Republic of Congo's Ebola outbreak from “high” to "very high" at the national level.

WHO raised the regional risk to "high" from "moderate" and kept its assessment of the global risk at "low".

The measure came after a new case of Ebola was confirmed in one of three health zones in Mbandaka, a city of more than one million people in the northWestern province of Equateur.

Mbandaka is located about 150 kilometers from the rural area of Bikoro, where the outbreak was detected earlier this month.

WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called it a concerning development.

The agency said it was deploying about 30 experts to conduct surveillance in the city. An initial batch of 4,000 experimental Ebola vaccines arrived Wednesday in the capital, Kinshasa.

A total of 44 confirmed, probable or suspected cases of Ebola have been reported since the outbreak was detected last week, including at least 23 deaths.

The worst Ebola outbreak since the virus was first identified in 1974 occurred in 2014, when more than 11,000 people died in the West African nations of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.世界衛生組織星期五在一份聲明中說，它把在剛果民主共和國爆發的埃博拉病毒對該國公衆健康的風險從“高”提高到“非常高”的級別。

世衛組織把剛果所在的非洲區域的埃博拉風險級別從“中等”提高到“高”風險，而全球的“低”風險級別維持不變。

世衛組織發表聲明之前，在剛果西北地區赤道省有100多萬人口的城市姆班達卡確認了一例新的埃博拉病毒感染病例。

姆班達卡距離本月早些時候最先發現埃博拉病毒流行的比科羅農村地區大約150公里。

世衛組織總幹事譚德塞博士（Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus）說這是一個令人關切的變化。

世衛組織表示向姆班達卡派遣了30位專家監測局勢。第一批的4000支實驗性埃博拉疫苗星期三運抵剛果首都金沙薩。

自從埃博拉病毒上星期在這一地區爆發以來，總共有44個核實、可能或疑似病例，其中23人死亡。

埃博拉病毒1974年被確認，世界上最嚴重的埃博拉病毒流行發生在2014年。在幾內亞、利比里亞和塞拉利昂等西非國家有1萬1000多人死於埃博拉病毒。