The Democratic Republic of the Congo national football team has cancelled a planned pre-World Cup training camp at home after the country was hit by an Ebola outbreak, a team official said on Wednesday.
Last Friday, health authorities declared an outbreak of the highly contagious haemorrhagic fever in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
The 17th Ebola outbreak to hit the DRC has already caused 139 deaths among around 600 probable cases.
“The training camp that was due to begin in Kinshasa for three days has been relocated to Belgium,” a team press officer said, without confirming whether the Ebola outbreak was the reason for the decision.
“No players based domestically have been selected for the national squad,” he added.
DR Congo has qualified for the World Cup, which will be held in the United States, Mexico and Canada, for only the second time after playing in 1974, when the country was known as Zaire.
They have planned to be based in Houston during the tournament, where they will play their first Group K match on 17 June against Portugal.
DR Congo are then scheduled to head to Guadalajara to play Colombia on June 24 before returning to the United States to play Uzbekistan in Atlanta on 28 June.
A US official said on Tuesday, “the team would be able to travel to play in the World Cup.”
The United States has banned non-Americans who have been in the DRC, Uganda or South Sudan in the previous 21 days from visiting due to the outbreak.
The US official said the DR Congo had already trained in Europe, so it may not have been subject to the ban in any case.
But if they, in fact, were in the DR Congo over the last 21 days, they would be subject to strict screening of the sort required for returning American citizens, not a complete ban.
