Congo’s war zone complicates Ebola response

Seven people killed in latest attack by rebels

BENI, Congo — In a new reminder of the dangers in containing an Ebola outbreak in a war zone, suspected rebels killed seven people overnight in northeastern Congo and sent residents fleeing, an official said Saturday.

Global health officials have warned that combating this virus outbreak is complicated by multiple armed groups in the mineral-rich region and a restless population that includes 1 million displaced people and scores of refugees leaving for nearby Uganda every week.

The insecurity means health workers might have to change a vaccination strategy that proved successful in Congo’s previous Ebola outbreak, the World Health Organization’s emergency preparedness chief Dr. Peter Salama said Saturday.

The so-called “ring vaccination” approach of first vaccinating health workers, contacts of Ebola victims and their contacts might have to give way to the approach of vaccinating everyone in a certain geographic area such as a village or neighborhood. That would require a larger number of vaccine doses.

Vaccinations began Wednesday in the current outbreak, which was declared Aug. 1 and has killed 11 people in the densely populated region. WHO has said more than 3,000 Ebola vaccine doses are available in Congo.

While Congo’s previous Ebola outbreak, declared over barely a week before the current one began, set off alarms by spreading to a city of more than 1 million on the other side of the country, the current outbreak comes with the threat of armed attack.

The overnight assault that killed seven people in Mayi-Moya, about 25 miles from Beni city, was probably carried out by rebels with the Allied Democratic Forces, the administrator of Beni territory, Donat Kibwana, told The Associated Press. The rebels have killed more than 1,500 people in and around Beni in less than two years.

The rebels sent the local population fleeing, Kibwana said. Beni residents already had been shaken by the discovery on Tuesday of 14 bodies of civilians who had been seized by possible ADF rebels.

The latest attack occurred as the WHO director-general, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, was visiting the area to see the response to the Ebola outbreak, which is being carried out in some cases under armed escort.

“The active conflict in the area is a barrier to control Ebola,” Tedros said in a Twitter post Saturday night. “I call on all warring parties to provide secure access to all responders serving affected populations & saving lives.”

U.N. peacekeepers, Congolese police and at times Congolese troops have been traveling with convoys of health workers as they fan out to contain the outbreak. Hospitals are guarded by Congolese police and military police.

Parts of North Kivu province, where most of the Ebola cases have been reported, have been inaccessible to aid groups because of the fighting.

Al-Hadji Kudra Maliro The Associated Press Police officers stand guard Friday at a newly established Ebola response center in Beni, Congo. Vaccinations began Wednesday in the current outbreak.