Claim: Ebola is real, Congo president tells skeptical population.
Verdict: SUPPORTS

Retrieved passages:
title: 2017 Democratic Republic of the Congo Ebola virus outbreak
text: DRC Minister of Public Health, Dr Oly Ilunga Kalenga, declared that the country had passed a 42-day period with no new recorded cases, and therefore the outbreak was over. A subsequent outbreak of Ebola was declared by WHO on 8 May 2018, in the northwest Province of Équateur. The first "situation report" from the WHO on 15 May 2017 listed 19 suspected cases and 3 deaths. The first person to request treatment was a 39-year-old male. On 16 May, the WHO indicated that there had been 21 suspected cases and 3 deaths. Approximately 400 additional individuals were being monitored in

title: 2017 Democratic Republic of the Congo Ebola virus outbreak
text: 83% of simulated scenarios predict no further cases in the next 30 days." According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "Ebola ... is a rare and deadly disease caused by infection with one of the Ebola virus species. Ebola can cause disease in humans and nonhuman primates (monkeys, gorillas, and chimpanzees)." Ebola was first identified in 1976 near the Ebola River in the DRC. More than 11,300 people died in the 2013 to 2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. According to the WHO's "Global Health Observatory", the DRC's population in 2015 was 77,267,000. On 1 July 2017,

title: 2014 Democratic Republic of the Congo Ebola virus outbreak
text: since the last reported case tested negative for the second time and was discharged. It was stated that the DRC would therefore be declared free of Ebola disease 42 days after the date of the second negative test if no new cases were reported. The outbreak was declared over on 15 November 2014. In October 2014, it was reported that more recent findings suggested that there may have been several previous cases. The husband of the woman that was believed to have been the index case told an investigation team that shortly before she became ill she had visited two

title: 2018 Équateur province Ebola outbreak
text: Health Emergency of International Concern; if the outbreak expands or spreads internationally, the committee will reassess the situation. US President Donald Trump has advocated rescinding Ebola funding and most financing for State Department emergency responses. National Security Advisor John Bolton removed the National Security Council’s health security chief on the day that the Ebola outbreak was declared, shutting down the entire epidemic prevention office.The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says “about five” of its staff advise the Congolese government. CDC presence appears to be smaller than West African countries'. The U.S. Agency for International Development promised $1 million

title: Ebola virus disease
text: died, and people in Yambuku began to panic. The country's Minister of Health and Zaire President Mobutu Sese Seko declared the entire region, including Yambuku and the country's capital, Kinshasa, a quarantine zone. No-one was permitted to enter or leave the area, and roads, waterways, and airfields were placed under martial law. Schools, businesses and social organizations were closed. Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), including Peter Piot, co-discoverer of Ebola, later arrived to assess the effects of the outbreak, observing that "the whole region was in panic." Piot concluded that Belgian nuns had inadvertently started

title: Ebola virus epidemic in Sierra Leone
text: severe shortages of protective supplies, with some nurses having to wear street clothes. David Tam-Baryoh, a radio journalist, was held for 11 days when he and a talk show guest, an opposition party spokesperson, criticised how President Ernest Bai Koroma handled the Ebola outbreak in a live broadcast on 1 November 2014. The weekly show "Monologue" was taken off-air mid-show from the independently run Citizen FM. He was arrested on 3 November and sent to the Pademba Road jail, after an executive order was signed by the president. On 14 November Sierra Leone's Deputy Information Minister Theo Nicol gave a

title: 2018 Équateur province Ebola outbreak
text: were suspected of having died from EVD near the town of Bikoro in the Province of Équateur. The World Health Organization declared the outbreak after two people were confirmed as having the disease. On 17 May, the virus was confirmed to have spread to the inland port city of Mbandaka, causing the WHO to raise its assessment of the national risk level to "very high", but not yet to constitute an international public health emergency. The WHO declared the outbreak over on July 24. Subsequent to this, 2018 Kivu Democratic Republic of the Congo Ebola virus outbreak was confirmed in

title: 2017 Democratic Republic of the Congo Ebola virus outbreak
text: is attempting to obtain and review Rwanda's public health rationale and relevant scientific information for implementing these measures. The sub-type "Zaire ebolavirus" has been confirmed in the current outbreak, from the family Filoviridae. It is a single stranded RNA virus, with a 60-90 percent mortality rate (the highest among the strains). An unusually high mortality has been reported in the local pig population. An investigation into potential causes is being considered. Multiple documented outbreaks of Ebola virus disease have occurred in the DRC, with the first being the 1976 outbreak. The virus took its name from the Ebola River near

title: 2014 Democratic Republic of the Congo Ebola virus outbreak
text: suspected or likely cases. On 9 September, the WHO raised the number of cases to 62 and the death toll to 35 from possible or confirmed Ebola cases. Included in this number were 9 health-care workers with 7 deaths among them. In total, 386 contacts were listed and 239 contacts were being followed. The outbreak was still contained in Jeera county in the Boende region. As of 28 October, there had been 66 cases reported. In total, 49 deaths had been reported, including eight among health care workers. No new reported contacts were being followed and twenty days had passed

title: Ebola virus epidemic in Sierra Leone
text: tested positive for Ebola. The last district in Sierra Leone untouched by the Ebola virus declared Ebola cases. According to Abdul Sesay, a local health official, 15 suspected deaths with 2 confirmed cases of the deadly disease were reported on 16 October in the village of Fakonya. The village is 60 miles from the town of Kabala in the center of the mountainous region of the Koinadugu district. This was the last district free from the virus in Sierra Leone. All of the districts in this country had then confirmed cases of Ebola. In late October 2014, the United Kingdom

title: Ebola virus epidemic in Sierra Leone
text: his clinic to accept Ebola patients. Sierra Leone's President, Ernest Bai Koroma, celebrated Khan as a "national hero". On 30 July, Sierra Leone declared a state of emergency and deployed troops to quarantine hot spots. In August, awareness campaigns in Freetown, Sierra Leone's capital, were delivered over the radio and through loudspeakers. Also in August, Sierra Leone passed a law that subjected anyone hiding someone believed to be infected to two years in jail. At the time the law was enacted, a top parliamentarian was critical of failures by neighboring countries to stop the outbreak. Also in early August Sierra

title: Ebola virus disease
text: and May 13, including 19 deaths." Some 393 people identified as contacts of Ebola patients were being followed up. The outbreak centered on the Bikoro, Iboko, and Wangata areas in Equateur province, including in the large city of Mbandaka. The DRC Ministry of Public Health approved the use of an experimental vaccine. On May 13, 2018, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus visited Bikoro. Reports emerged that maps of the area were inaccurate, not so much hampering medical providers as epidemiologists and officials trying to assess the outbreak and containment efforts. The 2018 outbreak in the DRC was declared over on

title: Ebola virus epidemic in Sierra Leone
text: among the approximately 1000 people currently under quarantine. A woman tested positive for the virus. The "Guinea ring vaccine" has been administered by a WHO team in the village since Friday 5 September. On 8 September the head of the National Ebola Response Center confirmed new cases of Ebola. This brought the total from the village to four cases, with all of them being under the "high risk" contact cases with the death of the new index case in the village. In total four cases were then confirmed including the dead woman. On 14 September, the National Ebola Response Center

title: West African Ebola virus epidemic
text: for the first time, the 2018 Équateur province Ebola virus outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with 3,481 people vaccinated. From the beginning of the outbreak, there existed considerable difficulty in getting reliable estimates—both of the number of people affected and of its geographical extent. The three most affected countries—Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone—are among the poorest in the world, with extremely low levels of literacy, few hospitals or doctors, low-quality physical infrastructure, and weakly functioning government institutions. One study yielded results of the spatio-temporal evolution of the viral outbreak. With the use of heat maps, it was

title: 2018 Équateur province Ebola outbreak
text: had been confirmed in the Wangata district of Mbandaka city, the capital of Équateur province, about 100 miles north of Bikoro. Mbandaka is a busy, densely populated port on the Congo River with a population of 1.2 million, so there would be a high risk of contagion. The following day, the WHO raised the health risk in DRC to "very high" due to the presence of the virus in an urban area. The DRC government was particularly concerned about the virus spreading by boat transport along the Congo between Mbandaka and the capital, Kinshasa. The WHO also considered that there

title: 2018 Équateur province Ebola outbreak
text: two later died after attending a prayer meeting, at which they may have exposed 50 other attendees to the virus. Bushmeat is believed to be one vector of infection, but bushmeat vendors at the Mbandaka market told reporters that they did not believe Ebola was real or serious. Hostility towards health workers trying to offer medical assistance was also reported. On 29 May, the WHO forecast somewhere between 100-300 cases before the end of July. Zaire ebolavirus, which has been identified in this outbreak, is included in genus "Ebolavirus", family "Filoviridae", which are negative-sense single-stranded RNA viruses. The virus was

title: Cultural effects of the Ebola crisis
text: medical resources and facilities. The unsanitary conditions in the overall African region have also made it easier for Ebola to spread. Alakey Osei, a student and bank-teller from Freetown, Sierra Leone, described the Sierra Leonean capital as a ghost-town, as a result of the increasing death toll in the West African region caused by the Ebola epidemic. Osei states that "everyone is scared to be out of their houses. No one is going to church or mosque, no one is going to work, the kids are not going to school, [and] people are not even going to the market place".

title: 2014 Democratic Republic of the Congo Ebola virus outbreak
text: and follow-up activities were carried out in order to limit the spread of the disease. There are no roads to the affected area, which made working conditions difficult. By 18 August, 13 people, including three health care workers, were reported to have died of Ebola-like symptoms in Équateur province, a province that lies about north of the capital Kinshasa.On 26 August, the Équateur Province Ministry of Health confirmed an outbreak of Ebola to the WHO. On 2 September, the WHO said that there were currently 31 deaths in the Northern Boende area in the province of Équateur and 53 confirmed,

title: West African Ebola virus epidemic
text: the second week of December, Sierra Leone had reported nearly 400 cases—more than three times the number reported by Guinea and Liberia combined. According to the CDC, "the risk we face now [is] that Ebola will simmer along, become endemic and be a problem for Africa and the world, for years to come." On 17 December, President Koroma launched "Operation Western Area Surge" and workers went door-to-door in the capital city looking for possible cases. The operation led to a surge in the number of cases, with 403 new ones reported between 14 and 17 December. According to the 21

title: Ebola virus disease in Mali
text: for two days waiting for rescue, while "Several of our doctors' children don't go to school anymore" because "People insult them, close relatives are distant. Even spouses and husbands are panicking," per a comment from the director of the Pasteur Clinic, Dramane Maiga. As part of a clinical trial, 50 health workers in Mali received an experimental Ebola vaccine during October and November; these workers are involved in the investigation and control of the current outbreak. By 23 November Mali reported 2 cases of Ebola infection among healthcare workers and 1 had died. ""Africa Stop Ebola"", featuring contributions from Malian,