Congolese health authorities intercepted a river boat carrying more than 300 passengers near Kinshasa on Thursday and began screening everyone on board after a man who had traveled on the vessel died with symptoms consistent with Ebola.
The boat was stopped in Maluku, roughly 65 kilometers upstream from the capital, where a mobile laboratory was deployed to carry out testing. Officials said all passengers were undergoing temperature checks and clinical screening, with samples already collected from four people showing symptoms such as fever. Results were expected Friday.
The health ministry’s secretary general, Bopo Ilonga Bompoko, said the operation followed the July 25 death of a 32-year-old man in Mongala province who was suspected of having contracted Ebola and was believed to have been on the boat before falling ill. Africa CDC Director-General Jean Kaseya said the man had disembarked and fallen sick in Pimu, more than 1,000 kilometers from Kinshasa, and confirmed the capital itself has no confirmed case tied to the incident.
The boat had reportedly been traveling for close to three weeks along the Congo River before it was intercepted. Authorities said passengers were being tested and held for monitoring regardless of whether they showed symptoms, out of caution.
Congo has been battling an Ebola outbreak since May that health officials have described as the fastest-spreading in the disease’s history, with confirmed cases now near 4,000 and more than 1,800 deaths recorded. It ranks as the second-largest Ebola outbreak on record, behind the 2014-2016 West Africa epidemic that killed more than 11,000 people.
Officials have said a majority of new infections — between 60% and 70% — are being detected outside networks of known contacts, complicating containment efforts in a country with limited road and rail infrastructure, where river transport remains a primary means of travel. News of the passenger’s death has stirred alarm in Kinshasa, a city of millions far from the eastern provinces at the center of the outbreak.
Separately, health workers at the epicenter of the outbreak in Ituri province have staged protests over unpaid wages, adding strain to the response as authorities race to contain the virus’s spread toward major population centers.
