Congo marks end of one Ebola outbreak

BENI, Congo — Eastern Congo marked an official end Thursday to the seconddeadliest Ebola outbreak in history, which killed 2,280 people over nearly two years, as armed rebels and community mistrust undermined the promise of new vaccines.

Thursday’s milestone was overshadowed, though, by the enormous health challenges still facing the Democratic Republic of Congo: the world’s largest measles epidemic, the rising threat of COVID-19 and another new Ebola outbreak in the north.

“We are extremely proud to have been able to be victorious over an epidemic that lasted such a long time,” said Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe, who coordinated the national Ebola response and whose team also developed a new treatment for the onceincurable hemorrhagic disease.

The announcement initially was set for April, but another case emerged just three days before the Ebolafree declaration was expected. That restarted the 42-day waiting period required before such a proclamation can be made.

The epidemic, which began in August 2018, presented an unprecedented challenge for the World Health Organization, Congo’s Health Ministry and international aid groups because it was the first Ebola epidemic in a conflict zone. Armed groups posed such a risk that vaccinations sometimes could be carried out only by small teams arriving by helicopter.

But much of the risk to hospitals and health workers came from the communities, often angered by the presence of outsiders and the amount of money being spent on Ebola as far more people died of perennial killers like malaria. Some suspected the epidemic was a political scheme, a theory that grew after then-President Joseph Kabila canceled national elections in Ebolaaffected areas.

Only a few years earlier, before there was a licensed vaccine or treatment, West Africa’s Ebola epidemic killed more than 11,000. By the time of the latest outbreak in eastern Congo, there was not one but two new experimental vaccines to ward off the disease, which kills about half its victims.

After more than a quarter-century of conflict, though, distrust of government health workers and other outsiders was exceptionally high in eastern Congo. Many residents initially refused a vaccine, fearing it would harm them.

With the arrival of the coronavirus, health teams in eastern Congo are once again trying to persuade people that a virus they’ve never heard of before could kill them. The COVID-19 outbreak in the region has been minimal, but the challenges of Ebola underscore how fraught it could be to treat those in areas under the control of armed rebels.

Some, though, are hopeful the region can weather the coronavirus. People here are accustomed to social distancing. Schools, churches and mosques are already equipped with hand-washing kits.

“Ebola has changed our culture,” said Esaie Ngalya, whose grandmother died from the virus. “Now I go to see my uncle, but we don’t shake hands. In our culture that is considered disrespectful, but now we have no choice, because health comes first.”