WHO chief reports 5 Ebola recoveries as a new treatment center opens in eastern Congo

Five pa­tients have re­cov­ered from a rare type of Ebo­la virus, the head of the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion said Sun­day dur­ing a vis­it to Bunia in east­ern Con­go, a city at the heart of an out­break.

“Four peo­ple will be dis­charged to­day and there was one that was dis­charged the day be­fore yes­ter­day,” WHO Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al Tedros Ad­hanom Ghe­breye­sus said dur­ing the open­ing of a new Ebo­la treat­ment cen­tre in Bunia, the cap­i­tal of Ituri province.

“Of course, we’re still work­ing on vac­cines and treat­ments but that doesn’t mean that peo­ple can­not re­cov­er from Ebo­la,” he added.

The WHO said Fri­day a pa­tient had re­cov­ered from the Bundibu­gyo virus, the cur­rent species of Ebo­la, which has no ap­proved treat­ment or vac­cine. It was the first doc­u­ment­ed re­cov­ery of a con­firmed Bundibu­gyo pa­tient dur­ing the cur­rent out­break.

The health or­ga­ni­za­tion said au­thor­i­ties have re­port­ed 134 con­firmed cas­es in Con­go and neigh­bour­ing Ugan­da, in­clud­ing 18 con­firmed deaths as of May 29.

Re­cov­ered pa­tients de­scribe their ex­pe­ri­ence

Bara­ka Bu­lam­bu­lu, one of those who re­cov­ered, told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press on Sun­day that com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers feared con­tract­ing an un­known ill­ness from them, keep­ing their dis­tance while de­liv­er­ing food and med­i­cine.

He said the un­cer­tain­ty was over­whelm­ing, as he and oth­er pa­tients be­lieved they might die with­out know­ing what dis­ease they had, though test­ing even­tu­al­ly con­firmed Ebo­la.

“Be­ing able to come out of this alive is an im­mense source of hap­pi­ness,” Bu­lam­bu­lu said. ”Many peo­ple who were in the same sit­u­a­tion died.”

Ezo Éti­enne, a nurse, said his symp­toms be­gan dur­ing ward rounds when he sud­den­ly felt dizzy, then rapid­ly de­te­ri­o­rat­ed in­to vom­it­ing, in­tense itch­ing, se­vere di­ar­rhoea and ex­treme weak­ness. He was test­ed sev­en times be­fore Ebo­la was con­firmed.

His treat­ment re­mained pure­ly to treat the symp­toms: med­ica­tions to con­trol vom­it­ing, flu­ids to pre­vent de­hy­dra­tion and pain re­liev­ers. “That was all they could pro­vide,” he said.

He urged the pub­lic and health­care work­ers not to dis­miss ear­ly symp­toms such as vom­it­ing and headaches, warn­ing that mis­in­for­ma­tion leads many peo­ple to be­lieve they have been poi­soned rather than seek­ing hos­pi­tal care.

Lack of sup­plies, dis­trust and in­se­cu­ri­ty com­pli­cate re­sponse

Doc­tors With­out Bor­ders, or MSF, said Sat­ur­day the virus con­tin­ues to spread faster than the re­sponse de­spite bet­ter-or­ga­nized health fa­cil­i­ties and new aid ar­rivals. It called for the im­me­di­ate ex­pan­sion of test­ing, faster de­ploy­ment of aid work­ers and sus­tained ac­cess for med­ical sup­plies.

The dan­gers faced by health work­ers have been height­ened by anger among res­i­dents over the strin­gent med­ical pro­to­cols for han­dling the vic­tims’ bod­ies, which clash with lo­cal bur­ial rites. Res­i­dents have launched at least three at­tacks against health cen­tres.

Tedros stressed the im­por­tance of in­volv­ing the com­mu­ni­ty in the out­break re­sponse dur­ing the open­ing of the new treat­ment cen­tre on Sun­day.

“If you come to health fa­cil­i­ties when you have symp­toms, you can get the sup­port and re­cov­er, so the key is to come for­ward as ear­ly as pos­si­ble and to get the nec­es­sary sup­port,” the WHO chief said.

“We can stop this Ebo­la and any­one who has it can al­so re­cov­er. But the rule ... is this thing is every­body’s busi­ness, and every cit­i­zen should be in­volved,” he added.

At­tacks in the re­gion by the Al­lied De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Forces, a rebel group al­lied with the Is­lam­ic State group, and a coali­tion of eth­nic mili­tias have al­so hin­dered the re­sponse.

ADF fight­ers killed sev­en peo­ple Sat­ur­day in Beni, North Kivu province, an area al­so af­fect­ed by the out­break, the Con­golese army and civ­il so­ci­ety groups said.

The ill­ness al­so has been re­port­ed in both North Kivu and South Kivu, south of Ituri, where the Rwan­da-backed M23 rebel group con­trols many key cities, in­clud­ing Go­ma and Bukavu.

“The fi­nal mes­sage we would like to share with the Ituri com­mu­ni­ty is that there is hope,” Pierre Ak­il­i­mali, in­ci­dent man­ag­er at Con­go’s Na­tion­al In­sti­tute of Pub­lic Health, said dur­ing the in­au­gu­ra­tion on Sun­day.

“With the symp­to­matic treat­ment that we are cur­rent­ly pro­vid­ing, we are see­ing pa­tients re­cov­er,” Ak­il­i­mali added.

“We tru­ly have hope. The virus here is not as com­pli­cat­ed as those we have dealt with in the past, and with the sup­port of all our part­ners, we be­lieve we will be able to bring this out­break un­der con­trol as quick­ly as pos­si­ble,” said Davin Am­bita­pio, an­oth­er doc­tor at the treat­ment cen­tre. —BUNIA, Con­go (AP)

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Sto­ry by JUSTIN KABUM­BA and MARK BANCHERE­AU | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Mark Banchere­au re­port­ed from Dakar, Sene­gal.