Ebola Outbreak Response Disrupted by Attacks in DR Congo

Doctors battling the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo are facing growing challenges as attacks on health facilities and fleeing patients disrupt response efforts in the country’s northeast, Reuters reported.

At least three such incidents have been reported so far in Ituri province, where the first Ebola cases were detected.

Two attacks over the weekend targeted the Mongbwalu General Referral Hospital, allowing more than two dozen patients to escape.

Dr Richard Lokodu, medical director of the Mongbwalu General Referral Hospital, told Reuters that there was widespread mistrust and denial surrounding the outbreak.

“There is denial of the disease within the population, with some members wanting to claim the bodies of suspected and/or confirmed cases,” he said.

According to Lokodu, 18 Ebola patients fled on Saturday after unidentified individuals set fire to tents installed by medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières to isolate patients. Four test results from those patients later came back, including one confirmed Ebola infection.

“So we have one confirmed case of Ebola that continues to circulate in the community and evade the response,” Lokodu said.

On Sunday, the hospital faced four more waves of attacks allegedly led by youths mobilised by relatives of a Christian religious leader who had died of Ebola. Seven additional patients escaped during the unrest, while a critically ill suspected Ebola patient suffering from haemorrhaging died while trying to flee during the second attack.

Police in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo fired shots in the air after angry crowds attempted to reclaim the bodies of relatives who had died at an Ebola treatment centre in Mongbwalu, according to local media reports, BBC reported.

The recent incidents have revived memories of the 2018-2020 Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo, during which more than 25 health workers were killed in attacks targeting treatment centres.

Doctors on the front lines are also grappling with shortages of basic supplies as the virus spreads rapidly across the region.

Lokodu said the attackers wanted the bodies of Ebola victims released for burial and warned that unsafe burials, where family members handle bodies without protective equipment, are a major driver of transmission.

Earlier this week, crowds in Rwampara town, around 85 km southeast of Mongbwalu, also set fire to isolation tents at a hospital after they were prevented from taking away the body of a man suspected to have died of Ebola for burial.

The World Health Organization has described the current outbreak as the third-largest outbreak of the Bundibugyo strain on record and declared it a public health emergency of international concern.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said more than 900 suspected cases, including 101 confirmed infections and at least 220 suspected deaths, had been recorded so far.

Earlier on Monday, Uganda, Congo’s neighbour, reported two additional Ebola cases, taking its total number of confirmed infections to seven.