Residents burn an Ebola treatment centre as anger grows 

BUNIA (AP):

People set fire to an Ebola treatment centre in a town at the heart of the outbreak in eastern Congo yesterday after being stopped from retrieving the body of a local man, a witness and a senior police officer said, as fear and anger grow over a health crisis that doctors are struggling to contain.

The arson attack in Rwampara reflects the challenges for health workers trying to curb a rare Ebola virus using stringent measures that may clash with local customs, such as burial rites. The disease has been spreading for weeks in a region lacking adequate health facilities and where many people are on the move to escape armed conflicts.

The bodies of those who die from Ebola can be highly contagious and lead to further spread when people prepare bodies for burial and gather for funerals. The dangerous work of burying suspected victims is being managed wherever possible by authorities, which can be met with protests from victims’ families and friends.

The centre in Rwampara was burned by local youths who became angry while trying to retrieve the body of a friend who had apparently died of Ebola, according to a witness.

“The police intervened to try to calm the situation, but unfortunately they were unsuccessful,” said Alexis Burata, a student who said he was in the area. “The young people ended up setting fire to the centre. That’s the situation.”

Deputy Senior Commissioner Jean Claude Mukendi, head of the public security department in Ituri Province, said the youths had not understood the protocols for burying a suspected Ebola victim.

“His family, friends, and other young people wanted to take his body home for a funeral even though the instructions from the authorities during this Ebola virus outbreak are clear,” Mukendi said. “All bodies must be buried according to the regulations.”

Hama Amadou, field coordinator for the humanitarian organisation ALIMA, which had teams working at the centre, said later that calm had been restored and that aid teams were continuing their work at the centre.

The flash of anger underlined the complications faced by both Congolese authorities and an array of aid agencies trying to stem an outbreak that the World Health Organization has declared a public health emergency of international concern.

The outbreak is bigger than official figures show, WHO says.

There were 160 suspected deaths and 671 suspected cases in Congo’s two provinces, Congolese authorities said on Thursday. Earlier in the week, the U.N. said there were two cases, including one death, in neighbouring Uganda.

But the WHO has said the outbreak is almost certainly much larger and has also expressed concern over the speed of its spread.

“We are still in the phase where we are intensifying the investigation, searching for cases,” said Jean Kaseya, Director-General of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. “I expect the number of cases to increase as surveillance becomes more and more rigorous.”

The risk of the outbreak spreading globally is low, the WHO has said, but high regionally, with Ituri Province at the centre of the outbreak bordering Uganda and South Sudan.

Early detection of the virus is key to saving lives, but the region’s already weak health infrastructure and surveillance capacity have been further strained by international aid cuts, experts say. There are over 920,000 internally displaced people in Ituri Province, according to the UN.

File name: A9 Ebola mourning

 Caption: A woman mourns her child, who died of Ebola, at the General Hospital in Bunia, Congo, Thursday. AP