Democratic Republic of Congo records 1,000 deaths related to Ebola in current focus | New

According to the country's health ministry, the toll of the latest Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has already exceeded 1,000 deaths. volatile security situation and deep distrust of the community that complicates efforts to repel the outbreak of nine months.

The Ministry of Public Health said in its last update On Friday, 14 new deaths from the virus were recorded, bringing the number to 1,008 deaths from more than 1,450 confirmed cases recorded since the outbreak of the outbreak in August.

The ministry's news came after the World Health Organization (WHO) warned earlier Friday that health officials "anticipated a persistent continuing transmission scenario" after 126 confirmed cases were reported over a period of a year. seven days ending Sunday, a record for the current month. trigger.

Health Ministry spokeswoman Jessica Ilunga said the rising number of cases resulted from attacks on health workers and treatment centers disrupting the "response activities" carried out in recent weeks. .

"Security has been a big problem, and every time we have an incident, critical response activities such as contact tracing, vaccination and safe burial are suspended for an indefinite period, which leaves the time and space necessary for the spread of the virus, "Ilunga told Al Jazeera.

Repeated attacks

The current epidemic of Ebola in the DRC, the tenth to date, has appeared in the east of North Kivu province before spreading in the neighboring province of Ituri.

In an attempt to contain the epidemic, health workers have vaccinated more than 109,000 people so far as part of a government-supported immunization program. The vaccine is experimental, but its effectiveness is estimated at 97.5%.

Efforts to defeat the virus have, however, been hampered by persistent unrest in eastern DRC and widespread mistrust among the local population towards the central government, which postponed the presidential and legislative elections. in parts of the region due to the Ebola outbreak, as well as medical strategies deployed by emergency responders.

Dozens of armed groups operate in the conflict-torn region, including in the areas surrounding the towns of Beni and Butembo, in North Kivu, where the current focus is concentrated.

Ebola treatment centers and health workers have been repeatedly attacked. 119 such incidents have been recorded since January, according to the WHO.

Friday, Michael Ryan, WHO chief of emergency, warned at a press conference in Geneva that insecurity had become a "a major obstacle to getting to the communities we want to serve in the fight against the Ebola virus, to engage with them and to serve them, "

In April, heavily armed assailants broke into a hospital in Butembo and killed Richard Mouzoko, a Cameroonian doctor from WHO working on the Ebola response.

The assault came after In February, unidentified assailants set fire to two Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) treatment centers in North Kivu, prompting the organization to suspend operations in the region and to warn shortly afterwards. a "climate of growing mistrust of the community" would intrude between "various political groups". , social and economic grievances "and an allegedly too militarized response from the authorities to the outbreak.

Generalized distrust

Christoph Vogel, a former UN expert in the DRC and a researcher with the UK-based Conflict Research Program at the London School of Economics, said there was a "multitude of different factors" that complicate the medical response and warned that recent attacks have the ground was "extremely poisoned".

"The epidemic is occurring in a region that has experienced deep-rooted armed conflict, massive violence and mistrust among different actors, communities and elites, which is probably the central factor that makes the epidemic so difficult to fight. compared to others, "Vogel told Al Jazeera.

Vogel warned that it was not clear who was behind the attacks on health centers and health professionals, but said that international actors and authorities in the DRC should have done more to try to build trust with communities affected by the epidemic, highlighting widely shared views that the epidemic was manufactured to benefit local business owners elites or further destabilize the region.

According to a recent study by Lancet Infectious Diseases, about 32% of those surveyed in the eastern regions of the DRC affected by the Ebola virus said they did not believe that the virus existed and that They had been invented for financial gain. More than 36% think that the epidemic has been manufactured to destabilize the region.

Less than two-thirds of nearly 1,000 respondents said they would be vaccinated against the Ebola virus.

Ilunga, for one, admitted that some people in the east of the DRC "historically neglected" did not believe "the existence of Ebola and said that there were" several types of attacks "perpetrated against health workers, all" harmful "to the efforts made to defeat the virus.

"The majority of acts of violence against medical interventions are acts of violence within the community, for example when people infected with the Ebola virus travel to their homes because they have been alerted that someone one is dead … but when these people arrive, some people chase them, "said Ilunga.

"But attacks against Ebola treatment centers are better coordinated, by some sort of organized armed group," she added. "This is disturbing, especially because the future of the epidemic depends on factors beyond our control, those of the Ministry of Health."

The inability to overcome the epidemic so far has seen it become the second-most deadly in history, resulting in an epidemic between 2013 and 2016 that killed about 11,300 people in West Africa during its influx to Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.