Ebola outbreak in central Africa

Nearly 500 Ebola cases have now been confirmed in the deadly outbreak raging in central Africa, a WHO overview showed on Saturday, amid mounting concern over the swelling scale of the epidemic.

In its daily update on the situation, the World Health Organization tallied 452 confirmed cases, including 82 deaths, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo), where the outbreak was declared three weeks ago.

In neighbouring Uganda, meanwhile, it counted 19 confirmed cases, including two deaths.

The total of 471 cases and 84 deaths, based on numbers reported by the governments of DR Congo and Uganda, marked an increase of 100 cases and 20 deaths from a day earlier.

The increase came amid warnings that the outbreak, which the WHO has declared an international public health emergency, could eventually swell to become the largest on record.

A top official at the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Friday that models indicated that without strong public health interventions, the current outbreak risked rivalling the scale of the 2014 West Africa epidemic, which saw over 28,000 cases and more than 11,000 deaths.