Health workers in Congo’s Ebola outbreak attacked weekly

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Health teams responding to Congo’s latest Ebola outbreak are attacked three or four times a week on average, a level of violence unseen in the country’s nine previous outbreaks of the deadly virus, the health ministry said Monday.

The coordinator of the outbreak response, Dr. Ndjoloko Tambwe Bathe, spoke to reporters after a weekend marked by deadly rebel attacks and violent protests that suspended Ebola containment efforts in the epicenter of the outbreak.

In one attack, two health agents with Congo’s military were killed by rebels in the first such deaths since the outbreak was declared Aug. 1. The next day, residents of Beni protested another rebel attack that killed 15 civilians by pelting aid groups’ vehicles with stones.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is “outraged” by the violence against health workers and is calling on all armed groups to immediately stop attacks, his spokesman said Monday.

The number of confirmed Ebola cases in this outbreak is now 203, including 120 deaths. The virus is spread by contact with bodily fluids of those infected, including the dead.

Each suspension of Ebola containment work affects both vaccinations and the tracking of contacts of infected people. A deadly rebel attack late last month in Beni, the outbreak’s epicenter, forced work to stop for days while angry residents traumatized for years by conflict brought the community to a standstill.