More health workers strike as Ebola cases in Congo near 3,000, including over 1,300 deaths

Health work­ers at an Ebo­la treat­ment cen­tre in east­ern Con­go went on strike Sat­ur­day over pay­ment is­sues, dis­rupt­ing care for pa­tients in the epi­cen­tre of the coun­try’s rapid­ly grow­ing out­break.

The num­ber of con­firmed cas­es of Ebo­la in Con­go has reached 2,973, in­clud­ing 1,309 deaths, ac­cord­ing to gov­ern­ment da­ta re­leased Fri­day in what au­thor­i­ties say is the fastest-grow­ing out­break on record.

Ac­tiv­i­ties at the Elikya Ebo­la Treat­ment Cen­tre in Bunia, Ituri province, were large­ly par­a­lyzed af­ter doc­tors, nurs­es and se­cu­ri­ty staff stopped work.

About a hun­dred health work­ers protest­ed out­side the treat­ment cen­tre on Sat­ur­day. They said the un­paid bonus­es were un­der­min­ing morale and dis­rupt­ing pa­tient care and called on Con­golese au­thor­i­ties to set­tle the ar­rears so they could re­sume their work.

In a state­ment is­sued Fri­day, staff said they had unan­i­mous­ly vot­ed to strike from Sat­ur­day un­til “con­crete so­lu­tions” were found to re­solve “two months of un­paid per­for­mance bonus­es.”

Last week, health work­ers at Bunia Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, the re­gion’s largest med­ical cen­tre, went on strike over un­paid salaries. Some had told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press they have not re­ceived any pay­ment since they start­ed work at the on­set of the out­break.

The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion says more than 100 health­care work­ers have been in­fect­ed since the be­gin­ning of the out­break.

The Cen­tral African na­tion has been bat­tling the Ebo­la out­break caused by the rare Bundibu­gyo virus since May 15. A to­tal of 766 pa­tients re­main in iso­la­tion or in hos­pi­tals, while 540 have re­cov­ered so far, ac­cord­ing to da­ta from Con­go’s Min­istry of Health.

The east­ern province of Ituri ac­counts for near­ly 90% of con­firmed cas­es.

The out­break con­tin­ues to spread faster than health of­fi­cials can track de­spite an ex­pand­ing re­sponse.

A key chal­lenge is that health au­thor­i­ties have yet to iden­ti­fy the out­break’s pa­tient ze­ro, while dis­place­ment from armed con­flict and min­ing-re­lat­ed move­ments have made it dif­fi­cult to trace thou­sands who have come in con­tact with in­fect­ed in­di­vid­u­als.

The re­sponse is be­ing ham­pered by a fund­ing gap, at­tacks on health cen­tres, an on­go­ing con­flict in east­ern Con­go and mis­trust among lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties.

Re­sponse ef­forts have al­so been chal­lenged by the lack of ap­proved vac­cines or treat­ments for the Bundibu­gyo virus, un­like the more com­mon Zaire virus for which there is a vac­cine and which was re­spon­si­ble for most of Con­go’s past 16 out­breaks of the dis­ease.

En­rol­ment in a high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed study of two pos­si­ble Ebo­la treat­ments re­cent­ly start­ed in Ituri.

The WHO says the glob­al risk of the out­break spread­ing out­side Cen­tral Africa is low, not­ing Ebo­la spreads through di­rect con­tact with the bod­i­ly flu­ids of an in­fect­ed per­son rather than through the air, mak­ing it much hard­er to spread than res­pi­ra­to­ry virus­es. —BUNIA, Con­go (AP)

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Sto­ry by PROS­PER HERI NGORO­RA and CON­STANT SAME BAGAL­WA | As­so­ci­at­ed Press