The UN health chief, who is in the Democratic Republic of Congo to help fight an Ebola outbreak, was due Friday to meet Congolese authorities before heading Saturday to the violence-hit region at the centre of the crisis.
World Health Organisation head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus arrived in the capital, Kinsasha, late Thursday, two weeks after the outbreak of the highly contagious haemorrhagic fever was declared.
He had been due to travel Friday to Ituri, a remote northeastern province that is the epicentre of the country’s 17th Ebola outbreak, but the trip has been pushed back by a day.
There have been at least 1,077 suspected cases since the outbreak was declared on May 15, including 246 deaths, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said Thursday.
But the true reach of the outbreak, which is thought to have been circulating before it was detected, is likely much wider, the WHO has warned.
The DRC has limited capacity to conduct laboratory tests to confirm the transmission of cases.
Congolese and international health authorities have struggled to curb the spread of the virus, which is already present in three provinces and in neighbouring Uganda, where seven confirmed infections, including one death, have been recorded.
The DRC, a vast nation of more than 100 million people, is one of the poorest countries in the world and for more than three decades has been plagued by conflict from myriad armed groups in its mineral-rich east.
Ebola, which is passed on through
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