GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) — The World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday announced the first recovery of a confirmed Ebola patient in the outbreak raging in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

“The DRC has said that on May 27, a patient recovered and left the hospital and has been discharged into the community,” the WHO’s Anais Legand told reporters.

She said it marked the “first” among patients who had been confirmed to have Ebola, but stressed that she expected there had been other recoveries among people who have not yet received laboratory confirmation of test results.

“This is the first one” to be discharged from a care centre “following two negative tests”, said Legand, a WHO technical officer on viral haemorrhagic fevers.

She said the WHO had to date recorded 17 confirmed and 223 suspected Ebola deaths in the DR Congo since the outbreak was declared on May 15, out of 125 confirmed cases and over 900 suspected cases.

In neighbouring Uganda, seven cases have also been confirmed, including one death.

Legand said that three of those cases had been imported from DRC, while the others were all “linked”, with “no evidence of community transmission at this stage”.

Out of the confirmed cases in DRC, she said 16 were among healthcare workers, who can be particularly vulnerable to Ebola, which spreads through bodily fluids and close contact with symptomatic patients or the bodies of those who die from the virus.

“It is a terrible disease”, Legand said, pointing out that “you get it when you want to help someone who is sick”.

She highlighted the complexity of responding to such outbreaks, where to halt transmission, “you have to have communities not touch someone they love when they are feeling sick”.

“What’s the most important thing is that we can support them to get early access to care,” she said, stressing that this could greatly improve survival rates.

Ebola has killed more than 15,000 people in Africa over the past 50 years.

The DRC is on its 17th outbreak of the disease, the deadliest of which claimed nearly 2,300 lives out of 3,500 cases between 2018 and 2020.

No vaccine or specific treatment exists for the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, which is behind the current outbreak.

The strain can have a case fatality rate of up to 50 per cent.

For the known cases in this outbreak, the rate currently appears to be below 25 per cent, although that number is evolving.

Legand stressed it was possible to “do more” to push Ebola’s “huge” fatality rate down.

“We can scale up optimised intensive care. We can support the communities to recognise the symptoms early to get early diagnostics, so that they can receive the level of care they need,” she pointed out.

“Access to care can help save life.”

To rein in transmission, the WHO says strong infection prevention and control and safe burials of highly infective bodies of those who have died from Ebola is also essential.

The agency does not meanwhile recommend international travel restrictions, although it say no one who is sick with Ebola should travel, nor should anyone from the affected areas who are contacts of confirmed or suspected cases.

DRC and Uganda are also required under the so-called International Health Regulations to implement exit screening measures.

But beyond that, Legand said that “based on current information, WHO does not recommend any restriction on travel or trade with the Democratic Republic of the Congo or with Uganda”.