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July 31 (UPI) -- Health officials say they have discovered another case of Ebola in the eastern Congolese border town of Goma -- a growing crisis that has the attention of United Nations emergency officials. Officials said the new patient arrived in Goma from a mining region in Ituri province. The first case was confirmed July 15.
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"We are doing our best to make sure that patients from Ebola high-risk areas don't travel to other areas," Jean-Jacques Muyembe, director of the Congolese National Institute for Biomedical Research, said in a statement.
The World Health Organization said Congo's Ebola crisis is now the second-worst in history. The nation has nearly 2,700 confirmed or probable Ebola cases and more than 1,800 patients have died so far.
U.N. Ebola Emergency Response Coordinator David Gressley and WHO Assistant Director-General Dr. Ibrahima Soce Fall said Wednesday they're "working intensively" to halt the spread of the virus. They said workers will increase surveillance at entry points. Fall and Gressley also said there is no evidence the second case is connected to the first.
The mortality rate is about 50 percent for Ebola, which can spread to humans from wild animals like fruit bats, porcupines and non-human primates. It's transmittable through direct contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids.
Uganda reported last month two people had died from the virus and more than two dozen may have been exposed.
Rwanda, which shares a border with Congo, next to Goma, has been on high alert during the current outbreak. Officials there have held clinical drills at public hospitals in high-risk areas to contain the virus if it crosses the border.
The UN World Food Program announced Friday that it plans to double food assistance to people affected by Ebola over the next six months in preparation for a wider outbreak.
