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A tent used for treatment of the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo was set on fire for the second time this week, and 18 people suspected of infection left, a local hospital director said Saturday.
Unidentified people arrived at the clinic in Mongbwalu, a town at the centre of the outbreak of the Bundibugyo virus, a rare type of Ebola, on Friday night.
They set fire to a tent set up by the Doctors Without Borders humanitarian group for suspected and confirmed Ebola cases, Dr. Richard Lokudi, director of the Mongbwalu General Referral Hospital, told The Associated Press.
“We strongly condemn this act, as it caused panic among the staff of the Mongbwalu Referral Hospital and also resulted in the escape of 18 suspected cases into the community,” he said.
On Thursday, another treatment centre in the town of Rwampara was burned down after family members were prohibited from retrieving the body of a local man.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has raised the public health risk from the current Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (D.R.C.) from ‘high’ to ‘very high.’ Bronwyn Nichol of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies says the organization has launched a regional emergency appeal to strengthen community-level responses to the outbreak.
The bodies of those who died of Ebola can be highly contagious and lead to further spread when people prepare them for burial and gather for funerals. The dangerous work of burying suspected victims is being managed wherever possible by authorities, which can be met by protests from families and friends.
A burial for Ebola patients in Rwampara took place on Saturday under tight security as tensions between health workers and the local community ran high, said David Basima, a team leader with the Red Cross overseeing burials.
“Arriving at the [health-care] structure, we experienced a lot of difficulties, including resistance from young people and the community. So we were forced to alert the authorities so that they could come to our aid, just for safety,” he said.
On Friday, authorities in the northeastern part of the country banned funeral wakes and gatherings of more than 50 people in an effort to curb the spread of the virus. The World Health Organization (WHO) said the outbreak now poses a “very high” risk for the D.R.C. — up from a previous categorization of “high” — but that the risk of the disease spreading globally remains low.
WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday that 82 cases and seven deaths have been confirmed in the D.R.C. but that the outbreak is believed to be “much larger.”
There is no available vaccine for the Bundibugyo virus, which spread undetected for weeks in the country’s Ituri province following the first known death while authorities tested for another, more common, Ebola virus and came up negative. There are now 750 suspected cases and 177 suspected deaths, though more are expected as surveillance expands.
The World Health Organization expects cases of the rare Ebola strain to rise, deeming it a public health emergency of international concern, but not a pandemic emergency. The Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda have both declared outbreaks.
Dr. Jean Kaseya, director general of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, said a response to the outbreak must include building trust with communities.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said on Saturday that three of its volunteers had died from the outbreak in Mongbwalu. The agency said it believed the three health-care workers contracted the virus while carrying out dead body management activities on March 27 as part of a humanitarian mission unrelated to Ebola.
This would significantly push back the timeline of the outbreak from the previous first confirmed death in late April in the town of Bunia, the capital of Ituri.
