High-security Ebola burials spark dismay and anger in DR Congo

BUTEMBO: People in Ebola-hit eastern DR Congo are struggling to come to terms with high-security burials that are part of a hard-pressed strategy to roll back the disease. Anyone who dies of the highly infectious haemorrhagic fever has to be buried in carefully-controlled conditions designed to minimise the risk of infection from body fluids.

But that means ceremonies are carried out in sanitised conditions, with relatives and friends kept at a distance -- for many, a traumatic break with traditions that demand the body of a lovedone be seen or touched. “We’re astonished she’s being buried like this,” said Denise Kahambu as she watched the speciallyprepared burial in Butembo of her 50-year-old cousin, Marie-Rose. “They said she died of Ebola,” she said sceptically. First declared last August, the epidemic has now claimed nearly 1,200 lives -- 200 of them in May alone. The outbreak is the second deadliest on record, after an epidemic that killed more than 11,300 people in West Africa in 2014-16. (AFP)