Fear and suspicion hinder medics battling Ebola outbreak in Congo

‘Our grand-

DAKAR: With more than twice as many Ebola outbreaks as any other country since the virus was discovered in 1976, Congolese are familiar with the disease’s destructive power, yet fear and suspicion of medical authorities are still hindering efforts at containment.

Health officials say they are working hard to get out accurate information about the deadly hemorrhagic fever, but face significant mistrust in a part of Africa where many place more faith in clerics in white collars than doctors in white coats.

A doctor and a nursing sister were threatened by locals after they were accused of bringing the disease to their communities, while people in one town prevented medics from testing the body of someone suspected to have died from Ebola, officials said.

“The information campaign is being put in place but is still insufficient,” Médecins sans Frontières’ emergency medical co-ordinator Jean-Clement Cabrol told reporters in Geneva this week.

“Religious and traditional leaders in communities are not being used enough,” he said.

Congo’s government, the World Health Organisation and aid agencies are racing to contain what could be the most dangerous of Democratic Republic of Congo’s nine epidemics since it was discovered by northern Congo’s eponymous river four decades ago.

Its appearance in the northwestern river port city of Mbandaka this time gives it a potential clear shot at the capital Kinshasa, a chaotic city of more than 10 million inhabitants that lies downstream.

Since April, the disease is thought to have killed at least 22 people and infected 30 more.

Most people Reuters repor- ters spoke to in Mbandaka this week said they were pleased by the authorities’ energetic response. Even so, rumours about the outbreak’s real origins abound.

“Our grandparents lived a long time here in Mbandaka and they never experienced this,” said a merchant named Yvonne. “This is sorcery.”

In one of the more alarming developments, family members of two Ebola patients removed them from an isolation ward in Mbandaka on Monday night, walking them out of the hospital before putting them on the back of motorcycles.

One was taken to a nearby evangelical church, where she – by then vomiting and unable to walk – joined 19 other people for prayers.

She returned to hospital before succumbing to the illness the next night. The other patient was taken home, where he died hours later, leaving health officials scrambling to locate their contacts across the city of 1.5 million people.

A witness at the church, who declined to be named, said the woman came to testify that God had cured her.

“We prayed for her,” he said, shortly before she died. Health officials later turned up at the church to vaccinate people who had been in contact with her.

When Ebola hit the West African countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone in 2013 and 2014, killing more than 11 000 people, suspicion of health workers in spacesuit-like protective gear saw patients flee, helping accelerate the disease’s spread.

Health workers find themselves having to strike a delicate balance: restricting Ebola patients’ movements but without antagonising communities whose co-operation is vital.

It would be impractical and counter-productive to ask security guards, who are not equipped with protective gear, to forcibly restrain patients, said Nahid Bhadelia, a medical director at Boston University Medical Centre. – Reuters/ African News Agency (ANA)

This is sorcery’