Democratic Republic of Congo has started using the experimental mAb114 Ebola treatment on patients in the east of the country, the health ministry said yesterday, the first time it has been deployed against an active outbreak.

The outbreak in eastern Congo's North Kivu province has now spread to neighboring Ituri province, where a person who was a confirmed case died after returning home from the flare-up's epicenter in the North Kivu town of Mangina, the ministry said in a statement.

The ministry is reporting 57 cases of hemorrhagic fever, 30 of them confirmed as Ebola and 27 listed as probable. Of 41 reported deaths, 14 have been confirmed as Ebola.

The mAb114 treatment was developed in the United States by the National Institutes of Health using the antibodies of the survivor of an Ebola outbreak in the western Congolese city of Kikwit in 1995. It was 100 percent effective when tested on monkeys.

This is Congo's tenth outbreak of Ebola, which is spread via contact with bodily fluids of those infected, including the dead. There is no licensed treatment, and the virus can be fatal in up to 90 percent of cases, depending on the strain.