GENEVA, Oct. 10 (Xinhua) -- Efforts to eradicate the deadly Ebola epidemic in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) are proving successful, with cases largely confined to some rural areas, and it's time to "kill the virus," the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday.

In an update in Geneva, Dr. Michael Ryan, executive director of WHO Health Emergencies Program, said the virus has been pushed back into some of the same remote areas where it was first detected in August last year.

He said the virus was confined to a much smaller geographic triangle stretching between Mambasa, Komanda, Beni, Mandima, which is a shared space between North Kivu and Ituri.

The inaccessibility of those areas, as some communities can only be reached after a five-hour motorbike ride, and the fact that dozens of armed groups operate there, were the main complicating factors, he added.

Nonetheless, he noted that the DRC government was "in negotiation" with many militia groups to encourage them to lay down their weapons.

Meanwhile, local communities were also showing increased trust in highly skilled and hardworking frontline health workers, the WHO expert said, suggesting that stronger trust among at-risk communities is paying dividends in fighting the ongoing outbreak.

"The case fatality within the Ebola Treatment Units is less than a third," he said, highlighting the value of two effective vaccines now being used to fight it. "So while the overall fatality of the outbreak remains at two-thirds or 67 percent, mortality within the Ebola Treatment Units has dropped significantly."

According to the WHO, key priorities now include ensuring that each potential case of Ebola infection is followed up, and that the time it takes to admit them to a treatment facility is reduced to limit the chances of the disease spreading.

In the 14 months since the latest outbreak was declared in the DRC, more than 2,100 people have died, including over 160 health workers, and more than 1,000 individuals have also survived the disease and returned home, according to WHO reports last week. Enditem

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