Crucial test of Ebola vaccine raises hopes, doubts in Congo
MBANDAKA, Congo— Irene Mboyo Mola spent 11 days caring for her husband as he died of Ebola in a hospital where she said nurses were too scared to get close. She helped him to the bathroom, picked up his feverish body when he lost his balance, and reinserted an IV that fell out of his bleeding arm.
“He told me all he could see was death,” recalls Mola, a 30-year-old mother of six, as she sat slumped on the floor in her small hut.
That close contact put Mola at high risk of getting a disease that has no cure and kills about half of those infected. But now, as Congo battles the most serious Ebola outbreak since the devastating 2014 epidemic in West Africa, health workers have something new to offer: a vaccine.
With thousands of doses dispatched to front-line health workers, the world is watching to see if a promising but still experimental vaccine might help stop this terrifying disease faster than traditional measures doctors have tried since Ebola was identified 40 years ago.
Even if the vaccine helps, there are serious hurdles. The shots must be transported deep into forests with few paved roads without it spoiling in the heat. Health workers have to identify and track down anyone who’s had contact with a sick person. Hardest of all, they must persuade a scared and wary population that shots pushed by foreigners could save their lives.
“Communities themselves must be at the center of the response if the activities are going to be effective,” said Jonathan Polonsky of the World Health Organization, a surveillance coordinator in Mbandaka, a city of more than 1 million in northwestern Congo.
Mola’s six children have all been vaccinated. But she refused, telling government social workers and WHO workers that she didn’t believe her husband died from Ebola. She said the hospital never showed her records confirming he’d tested positive for the virus.
FEAR AND OPPORTUNITY
There’s no guarantee the longsought vaccine will help stop the outbreak. But Congo’s health ministry and the WHO rushed in 7,500 doses, created by the Public Health Agency of Canada and owned by Merck.
It was deemed the best option because the vaccine was found highly promising in testing a few years ago, when the epidemic in West Africa, which killed more than 11,000 people between 2014 and 2016, was starting to wane.
The plan: What’s called “ring vaccination,” to find and vaccinate everyone who’s had direct contact with a sick person—the first “ring”—and then contacts of those people, too, to break the chain of infection.
Last month, 11-year-old German Umba and her 6-year-old brother lost their father to Ebola. Both were vaccinated. But a shot alone doesn’t end the worry. U.N. workers monitor the children several times a day for fevers, an early symptom, until the incubation period passes.
Standing in the yard outside her classroom at school the young girl suddenly bursts into tears. Surrounded by aid workers, classmates and teachers who are unable to touch and console her, she buries her face in her shirt. “I just miss my father,” she says.
Success with the vaccination strategy hinges on the speed at which health workers can identify people at risk.
“If you detect cases late, you’re missing the opportunity to protect people,” said Dr. Iza Ciglenecki, who is working on the vaccination campaign with Doctors Without Borders.
Congo’s current outbreak has killed 14 people so far, according to the country’s Ministry of Health. There have been 38 confirmed infections.