Young men storm Congo Ebola hospital for relatives’ bodies

KIN­SHASA, Con­go (AP) — An­gry young men stormed a hos­pi­tal treat­ing Ebo­la pa­tients at the heart of the lat­est out­break of the dis­ease in east­ern Con­go on Sun­day evening, forc­ing the med­ical staff to scram­ble to evac­u­ate the pa­tients as gun­fire rang out in the area.

It was not im­me­di­ate­ly known if any­one was hurt in the at­tack on the Mongb­walu Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal but Dr. Richard Lokudu, the hos­pi­tal’s med­ical di­rec­tor, told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press the at­tack­ers de­mand­ed that two bod­ies of their kin be hand­ed over to them.

There was gun­fire and the medics were try­ing to evac­u­ate the pa­tients and the staff, Lokudu said over the phone.

“Mongb­walu Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal is on gen­er­al alert,” he added. He did not have any fur­ther de­tails of the un­fold­ing tur­moil.

The at­tack — the third in a week’s time on health­care fa­cil­i­ties where med­ical work­ers strug­gle with lack of re­sources to treat sus­pect­ed Ebo­la cas­es — un­der­lined the chal­lenges of the out­break, which the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion has de­clared a pub­lic health emer­gency of in­ter­na­tion­al con­cern.

Bod­ies of those who died of Ebo­la can be high­ly con­ta­gious and lead to fur­ther spread when peo­ple pre­pare them for bur­ial and gath­er for fu­ner­als.

In re­sponse to the out­break, Con­golese au­thor­i­ties have man­dat­ed that the dan­ger­ous work of bury­ing sus­pect­ed vic­tims be man­aged wher­ev­er pos­si­ble by au­thor­i­ties, which can be met by protests from fam­i­lies and friends. On Fri­day, the gov­ern­ment said fu­ner­al wakes and gath­er­ings of more than 50 peo­ple would be banned in north­east­ern Con­go in an ef­fort to curb the spread of the virus.

On Sat­ur­day, a group of res­i­dents of Mongb­walu, lo­cat­ed in Ituri province, at­tacked and set fire to a tent set up for sus­pect­ed and con­firmed Ebo­la cas­es by the Doc­tors With­out Bor­ders hu­man­i­tar­i­an group.

Dur­ing that at­tack, 18 peo­ple with sus­pect­ed Ebo­la in­fec­tions left the fa­cil­i­ty and were now un­ac­count­ed for, Lokudu had said ear­li­er.

On Thurs­day, an­oth­er treat­ment cen­ter, in the town of Rwampara, was burned down af­ter fam­i­ly mem­bers were banned from re­triev­ing the body of a lo­cal man sus­pect­ed to have died of Ebo­la.

WHO has said the out­break pos­es a “very high” risk for Con­go — up from a pre­vi­ous cat­e­go­riza­tion of “high” — but that the risk of the dis­ease spread­ing glob­al­ly re­mains low.

Ear­li­er on Sun­day, the Con­golese Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion said on X that there were 904 sus­pect­ed cas­es of Ebo­la, most­ly in north­east­ern Ituri Province — a sig­nif­i­cant jump from the pre­vi­ous­ly an­nounced more than 700 sus­pect­ed Ebo­la cas­es.

The min­istry al­so said the to­tal sus­pect­ed Ebo­la deaths stood at 119, but the num­bers it re­leased sep­a­rate­ly for each re­gion added up to 220. Of­fi­cials could not im­me­di­ate­ly be reached to ex­plain the dis­crep­an­cy.

There is no avail­able vac­cine for the Bundibu­gyo virus, a rare type of Ebo­la, which spread un­de­tect­ed for weeks in Ituri fol­low­ing the first re­port­ed death — in late April in the town of Bunia, the provin­cial cap­i­tal — while au­thor­i­ties test­ed for an­oth­er, more com­mon, Ebo­la virus and came up neg­a­tive.

The In­ter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of Red Cross and Red Cres­cent So­ci­eties said on Sat­ur­day that three of its vol­un­teers had died from the out­break in Mongb­walu. The agency said it be­lieved the three health­care work­ers con­tract­ed the virus on March 27 while han­dling dead bod­ies as part of a hu­man­i­tar­i­an mis­sion un­re­lat­ed to Ebo­la.

If con­firmed, this would sig­nif­i­cant­ly push back the time­line of the out­break.