Health officials in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) reported two more cases of Ebola virus late yesterday, a fatal case in a patient whose family refused vaccination and an illness in a patient from a community marked by resistance to outbreak response efforts.

The cases illustrate the challenges facing DRC and World Health Organization (WHO) health workers in the conflict-ridden region.

Officials have now reported 161 cases of Ebola in DRC, including 105 deaths. Nine cases are still under investigation. Though case counts have slowed in recent weeks, the outbreak is still ongoing in an insecure, unstable region, the WHO's regional office for Africa said in a weekly update.

The first new case involved a woman from Beni who died. DRC officials said she was the daughter of another Ebola patient who passed away at the Beni Ebola treatment center on Sep 22. The family refused vaccination and follow-up care.

The second case is man from Komanda. He belonged to a family that also refused vaccination, and was known to be behind pockets of resistance in the region. The man's sister-in-law was the first Ebola case-patient in Tchomia, near the Ugandan border. According to officials, the man fled Tchomia after his sister-in-law's death and was found hospitalized in a health post in Komanda. He will be transferred to the Tchomia isolation center.

Officials also said that Beni, a city in North Kivu province, remains the epicenter of recent virus activity, noting that 8 of the 9 cases confirmed from Sep 24 to 30 occurred in the city, as well as all 4 deaths reported during the same period.