Health workers launched an emergency operation yesterday to fight an outbreak of deadly Ebola haemorrhagic fever in southern Congo, airlifting supplies, setting up isolation tents and disinfecting contaminated areas. The World Health Organisation (WHO) and medical NGOs such as Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) joined local health authorities in a major logistics operation to try to contain the outbreak in Kasai Occidental province of Democratic Republic of Congo.

Congo?s government, citing test results from international laboratories, said recently at least five cases of Ebola had been confirmed in the province, where authorities have reported more than 160 deaths among 352 sick people over four months. Several African countries have suffered previous outbreaks of the highly contagious disease, which causes death in 50 to 90 percent of cases and is transmitted by contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected persons.

No vaccine or treatment exists that can cure Ebola fever.

MSF was reinforcing its health team in the Kasai Occidental village of Kampungu, the epicentre of the latest outbreak, and had flown three tonnes of supplies to the provincial capital Kananga for distribution in the worst-affected areas. This included tents and plastic sheeting. ?We have to build structures to isolate the patients,? said Pascale Zintzen, a spokeswoman for MSF in Kinshasa.

Medicines and water and sanitation materials, such as water tanks and chlorine for disinfectant, were also being sent.