Ebola outbreak could spill into Uganda, Rwanda & South Sudan: WHO

Ebola outbreak could spill into Uganda, Rwanda & South Sudan: WHO

The World Health Organization has warned that it is unlikely that the Ebola outbreak can remain successfully contained in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

WHO is warning that the situation could spiral out of control and spill into other parts of the country and across the borders of Uganda, Rwanda and South Sudan.

Lack of commitment to cease armed attacks, misinformation and a growing funding gap are said to be impeding the response to the Ebola outbreak in northeastern DRC.

Insecurity leaves response teams “unable to perform robust surveillance nor deliver much needed treatment and immunizations,” the WHO reported Friday in its latest update on the outbreak confirmed last August.

This month alone has brought setbacks such as a violent assault on a burial team in the town of Katwa and a gunfight between at least 50 armed militia and security forces in the city of Butembo, WHO reported.

WRITTEN IN SWAHILI

Mourners also buried Richard Valery Mouzoko Kiboung, a 41-year-old Cameroonian doctor killed April 19 while working for WHO and meeting with other front-line workers at Butembo University Hospital. The threats continue.

On Thursday, a VOA correspondent in Butembo saw a series of letters scattered on a street, each weighted down with pebbles.

Written in Swahili and attributed to Mai-Mai fighters, the letters warned police, soldiers and the general public against showing any support for Ebola responders or treatment centers.

Anderson Djumah, whose 10-year-old son is being treated for Ebola at the general hospital in the North Kivu town of Beni, complained that “the lack of security has just added more suffering.”

“Even Ebola treatment centers are targeted by the assailants. We’re afraid. Ebola is killing so many people. We’re still expecting that the government would be able to protect us,” he said. “… [But] some people who are sick with Ebola are fleeing to other places for their lives and are meanwhile spreading the sickness.”

COMPLICATIONS FOR CARE

Violence sends people into hiding and disrupts response operations such as contact tracing, vaccination and safe burials, giving “time and space to the virus to spread within the community and make more victims,” Jessica Ilunga, spokeswoman for the DRC’s health ministry, told VOA.

“Every time we have a security incident, the number of cases and deaths obviously increases,” Ilunga said.

The health ministry, leading the response with WHO’s help, reported 1,600 total cases as of Wednesday, with 1,534 confirmed and 66 likely.

This second-worst Ebola outbreak already has claimed 1,069 lives. The 2014-15 West African outbreak killed more than 11,000.

Many of the victims have died at home, potentially exposing others to the disease and leaving gaps in how — and to whom — the virus may have been transmitted.

“You don’t know who those contacts are,” said epidemiologist Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist and principal investigator for the Outbreak Observatory, a project of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “… Chances are you can’t offer them vaccines or treatment.”

Funding for the Ebola response has fallen far short of need, WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said in an email to VOA Wednesday.

As of May 2, WHO had received $32.5 million of the $87 million it estimated needing for six months ending in July.

“If the funds are not received,” Jasarevic wrote, “WHO will be unable to sustain the response at the current scale.”

New challenges in 10th DRC outbreak

This is the DRC’s 10th reported outbreak since the virus’ discovery near the Ebola River in 1976.

The country has proved adept at snuffing out past outbreaks of Ebola, which has been found in bats, monkeys and other animals sometimes consumed as “bush meat.”

The virus spreads through contact with an infected person’s body fluids.

Ebola was unfamiliar in the northeast, a region already destabilized by at least two decades of conflict. More than 100 armed groups roam the area, displacing hundreds of thousands of people.

High mobility and population density also raise the potential that the virus could cross into Uganda, Rwanda and South Sudan.

(The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been providing technical guidance to the DRC and its neighbours, for instance, helping them ramp up surveillance and vaccination tracking.)

WARY PUBLIC

Skepticism also factors into the Ebola equation. The northeast is an opposition stronghold, and its residents were angered to be kept from voting in December’s general elections, as former U.S. diplomat John Campbell pointed out in a Council on Foreign Relations blog post.

A study published in The Lancet medical journal in March found low public trust in local authorities and broad acceptance of misinformation about Ebola.

Just a third of the 961 respondents — adults surveyed in North Kivu’s Beni and Butembo last fall — said they had confidence that local authorities acted in the public interest. A fourth indicated they didn’t believe Ebola exists.

Mistrust and misinformation make it less likely that individuals will heed public safety directives, such as accepting Ebola vaccines, seeking formal medical care or supporting safe burial practices, the researchers noted.

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