The Ebola death toll in the Democratic Republic of Congo has risen to 26, with eight neighbouring countries also at risk as the deadly disease plagues the region.
The country's health ministry announced another death this morning, with four new cases of the deadly disease confirmed.
The World Health Organisation declared the risk of the disease spreading within the Congo as 'very high', after 46 cases of hemorrhagic fever were confirmed, 21 confirmed as Ebola, 21 probable and four suspected.
It has not yet branded the outbreak a world health emergency, but Angola, Zambia, Tanzania, Uganda, South Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi and the Central African Republic are all in danger of catching it.
There are currently no restrictions on international travel or trade and the UK is not being considered at risk.
But the disease has also spread to the Congolese city of Mbandaka, which has a population of over a million, sparking fears of it spreading quicker in dense urban areas.
Ebola is most feared because of how easily it spreads and how it can cause internal and external bleeding in victims.
The current outbreak in Congo is the ninth on record, after it first broke out in the 1970s, taking its name from the Ebola River.
It hit headlines in the UK when Glasgow-based nurse Pauline Cafferkey contracted the virus in Sierra Leone and risked bringing it to Britain when she travelled home.
President Joseph Kabila and his cabinet agreed yesterday to increase funds for the Ebola emergency response which now amounts to more than £3million.
Ebola, a haemorrhagic fever, killed at least 11,000 across the world after it decimated West Africa and spread rapidly over the space of two years.
That pandemic was officially declared over back in January 2016, when Liberia was announced to be Ebola-free by the WHO.
The country, rocked by back-to-back civil wars that ended in 2003, was hit the hardest by the fever, with 40 per cent of the deaths having occurred there.
Senior WHO official Peter Salama warned of an 'explosive increase' in cases calling the spread to a city 'a major development in the outbreak.'
Adding to concerns is the city's location on the banks of the Congo River, a major thoroughfare for trade and transport into the capital, Kinshasa. The Congo Republic is on the other side of the river.
'We are entering a new phase of the Ebola outbreak that is now affecting three health zones, including an urban health zone,' Health Minister Oly Ilunga Kalenga said in a statement. 'Since the announcement of the alert in Mbandaka, our epidemiologists are working in the field to identify people who have been in contact with suspected cases.'
The DRC is now facing its ninth Ebola outbreak since 1976. The latest episode, publicly declared on May 8, has seen 44 reported cases so far with 23 deaths, according to UN figures. Its epicentre is in the Bikoro area in remote Equateur province.
On Thursday the WHO said a case had been recorded in Mbandaka, a city roughly 150 kilometres (90 miles) from Bikoro. In 2007, the virus killed 187 people in the DRC, and 43 in 2012.
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