An Ebola treatment center was burned down as the death toll in Congo passes 4,000
Congo’s Ebola outbreak has killed more than 4,000 people, authorities said, making it the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak in history. Health Ministry figures released Thursday showed 4,018 deaths among 8,300 cases recorded since the outbreak was declared in eastern Congo on May 15. At least 50 health workers have died after contracting the virus, and Médecins Sans Frontières said the human cost of the crisis is unprecedented in the DRC, calling it the largest Ebola outbreak ever recorded in the country.
In Ituri Province, health workers gathered at the outbreak’s epicenter to demand unpaid wages. The protesters, including surveillance team members, waved placards saying, “No money, no data!” and “No payment for months.” Some workers had not been paid for August and September, said Biongi Beiza, one of the protesters in Bunia, Ituri’s capital, who added that there was no explanation from the administration; Congolese authorities did not immediately address the issue. Front-line workers have gone on strike several times since the outbreak began, further hampering efforts to contain the disease.
A senior U.N. official said an Ebola-hit displacement camp housing a transit center for infected patients was burned by soldiers earlier this week as they searched for weapons in Kigonze, on the outskirts of Bunia, forcing 19,000 people in the camp to flee. Julien Harneis, the U.N. senior Ebola coordinator, said creating such transit and treatment centers has been a struggle because money and staff are in short supply. “When we lose a center, that means we lose capacity, we lose investment, and we have to start again,” Harneis said. “And above all, it means that people do not get access to the care that they really need.”
An aid worker with Médecins Sans Frontières was infected with Ebola while working in Congo. The worker arrived in the Netherlands late Thursday on a special medical flight and was transferred to a high-level isolation unit, Leiden University Medical Center said in a statement. MSF said the crisis’s human cost is unprecedented in the DRC, with communities facing the largest Ebola outbreak ever recorded in the country.
Local authorities have also tried to contain the outbreak through mobile laboratories. In Butembo, an Associated Press journalist watched a medical team operating one such lab near an Ebola treatment center on Thursday. Test results that used to take 72 hours can now be obtained in six hours with the mobile labs, said Lota Kalubi, a doctor at the treatment center. Michel Ngimba of the National Institute of Biomedical Research in Butembo said the labs make it easier to reach locations that are usually difficult to access: if there is an emergency in Katwa, for example, a vehicle can be started and the lab moved there.