Efforts to stop the spread of Ebola in the Congo are running into ongoing armed conflicts and mistrust of the local population. The World Health Organization (WHO) warns that attacks by insurgent groups on exhausted frontline health workers dramatically increase the risk of undetected transmission.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), 101 people have already died from the Ebola virus. According to the latest report from Monday evening, a total of 550 cases were confirmed in the DRC during the current epidemic, and 19 of those infected have recovered, according to the AP agency.
- There are 550 cases of Ebola and 101 deaths in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
- The epidemic is caused by the Bundibugyo strain, for which there is no vaccine or treatment.
- Efforts to stop the epidemic are complicated by armed conflicts, attacks on health workers and skepticism of the population.
A strain of Ebola for which there is no vaccine
The focus of the epidemic is concentrated in the province of Ituri, where more than 90 percent of cases occur. Infections were also recorded in the provinces of North and South Kivu and in neighboring Uganda.
The actual number of cases in the DRC is believed to be higher because the epidemic was confirmed several weeks late, AP explains. The response to the disease was also difficult because the current epidemic was caused by the Bundibugyo Ebola virus strain, against which there is still no approved vaccine or treatment.
The increase in the number of cases is also partly due to the expansion of diagnostic capacities, which allows testing of samples that were taken earlier, authorities said.
Attacks on health workers and skepticism of the population
The AP points out that efforts to stop the epidemic are complicated by skepticism among local residents and attacks on frontline health workers, who have low salaries and little time off. Their work is made even more difficult by armed conflicts in some communities involving insurgent groups.
Such conflicts “restrict access to interventions, disrupt surveillance and intervention activities and increase the risk of undetected transmission,” the World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Monday.
Dozens of different insurgent and militant groups have been operating in the east of the DRC for a long time, some of which are connected to foreign countries or the Islamic State group, AP explains.
