Ebola survivors endure isolation, apprehension
Congo — Leoni Kahumbu remembers the night her 15-year-old daughter, Pascaline, first showed signs of Ebola. She had fainted on the bathroom floor, blood everywhere.
“She did not even have the strength to get up ... I called an ambulance,” Kahumbu said. Experts came to their home the next day to disinfect the house. The 48-year-old and her three other children were isolated but have not contracted the often deadly virus.
Pascaline survived. She was among the first people given mAb114, one of five experimental treatments approved for use in Congo’s latest Ebola outbreak.
Now she and other survivors must deal with the emotional toll of returning to nervous communities where they could be shunned. “Thank God I’m still alive,” said another survivor, Dr. Maurice Kakule Muchunga, one of several health workers who have been infected.
This is the first time an Ebola outbreak has ocBENI, curred in Congo’s North Kivu and Ituri provinces, densely populated areas with an estimated 1 million people displaced by numerous armed groups fighting over rich natural resources. Ninety cases have been confirmed as Ebola, including 48 deaths.
Health officials face the challenge not only of combatting a deadly virus in what is effectively a war zone but also of pushing back against possible stigma and fears of the unknown.
“Although I was negative for Ebola, all of my friends are scared of me,” said Kahumbu, who tested negative for Ebola and came home to find all of the family’s belongings destroyed to stop the virus from spreading. “I spend all day inside watching TV, and if I leave there are whispers and fingers pointing to me as the parent of a child who suffers Ebola.”
Last week, the Catholic bishop of the local Butembo-Beni diocese made a point of being vaccinated in Mangina village, where the outbreak was identified, to encourage others at risk to present themselves to health officials, Congo’s health ministry said. Traditional healers were trained in Ebola prevention.
The ministry also put out a notice against a rumor circulating on social media that said eating onions would guard against Ebola. “It’s UNTRUE!” the ministry said.
More worrying is local resistance to health workers who are trying to promote safe burials, which are key to containing the outbreak as the virus is spread via bodily fluids of those infected, including the dead.
“We are experiencing fear and anger in some communities against Red Cross teams who come to bury the deceased,” Dr. Balla Conde, head of emergency operations with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said in a statement.
As health workers try to contain this outbreak more than 5,400 people have been vaccinated so far, according to Congo’s health ministry.