Crucial Quote
“We are not just fighting a deadly virus,” Saani Yakubu, Congo country director for the ActionAid charity told the Wall Street Journal. “We are fighting myths, fear and deep-seated suspicion.”
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Surprising Fact
The conflict in Congo is one of eight “wars” President Donald Trump has claimed to have solved. The Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, which has had a presence in Ituri since the Second Congo War, signed an agreement in December at the White House to force Rwandan troops to withdraw from eastern Congo and establish a regional economic framework. Fighting continues between the two sides, but there have been small signs of progress.
Key Background
The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed an Ebola outbreak in the Ituri province of Congo on May 15, the country’s 17th in the last 50 years. By the time the outbreak was declared, it had already sickened 246 people and killed 65. Laboratory tests soon confirmed the outbreak is of the Bundibugyo strain, an Ebola variant with a mortality rate over 30% for which there is no vaccine or treatment. More than 1,000 people have since been infected with the illness, and more than 220 have died. The WHO declared the outbreak an “extraordinary event” that could pose a public health risk to multiple nations. The WHO, Africa CDC, African governments, United Nations, charities and public health agencies from the West have cobbled together a fragmented response to the outbreak and workers are trying to coordinate surveillance, isolation, treatment, laboratory testing and travel screening to prevent spread. The U.S. CDC has activated a Level 2 emergency response and is deploying staff for epidemiology, contact tracing, lab support and traveler monitoring through existing offices in Congo and Uganda. International donors have pledged roughly $500 million to fight the outbreak, according to WHO, including $23 million from the U.S. government and $15 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Traditionally, American help for Ebola outbreaks would come from USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development, but that agency was largely dismantled under Trump.
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Violence Hampering Ebola Response
In the last week, Congo has seen treatment centers burned, hospitals stormed by angry crowds and health workers threatened or attacked amid fighting between the region’s armed groups. An Ebola treatment center in Rwampara, a mining zone in the Ituri province, was set on fire last week by locals who became angry when they weren’t allowed to retrieve the body of a friend who’d died. Contact with the body of an Ebola victim is an easy way for the disease to spread, but sanitary disposal of a body conflicts with the cultural burial rites of the Congolese. The same frustrations spurred a confrontation between relatives of a person who’d died and Red Cross volunteers at Mongbwalu General Hospital, and police and soldiers are still at the hospital to defend against further attacks. Also in Mongbwalu, a tent being used to treat Ebola victims was burned and at least 18 people with suspected cases of Ebola fled during the attack.
Tangent
It’s not just violence that is making the Ebola outbreak hard to manage. The rural and remote geography of Ituri, as well as its relative lack of infrastructure make containment difficult, NPR reported. Ituri is a mining area, so people often travel there for work and then return home, possibly carrying the virus with them. Health workers are confronting severe shortages of basic supplies, like medicine, masks, gloves, face shields, medicine, testing kits, body bags, running water and soap. Several charity groups and public-health experts have decried international aid cuts in recent years from the U.S. and European countries and said they may have been able to identify the Ebola outbreak earlier if they’d had funding for surveillance systems and emergency supplies. Aid workers are also fighting resentment tied to the so-called “Ebola business” in Congo, which have plagued past outbreaks with accusations of profiteering and fraud as some residents are convinced aid organizations benefit financially from prolonged crises.
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Further Reading
ForbesFrontline Workers ‘Risking Everything’ To Contain ‘Catastrophic’ Ebola Outbreak (Live Updates)By Mary Whitfill RoeloffsForbesU.S. Issues New Ebola Travel RestrictionsBy Mary Whitfill RoeloffsForbesWHO Declares Ebola Outbreak In Africa ‘Extraordinary’ Public Health EmergencyBy Zachary Folk