In Congo, too many Ebola outbreaks are dying at home – New Delhi Times

Lahya Kathembo, two months old, became an orphan in one day. His mother succumbed to Ebola on a Saturday morning. At sunset, his father was dead too.

They had been sick for more than a week before health workers finally persuaded them to seek treatment, neighbors said. They thought their illness was the work of people jealous of their newborn daughter, said a community organizer, and asked for help from a traditional spiritual healer.

The Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo ravages Beni, a sprawling city of some 600,000 inhabitants, largely because many patients choose to stay at home. In doing so, they unconsciously infect the caregivers and those who cry.

"People wait until the last minute to bring their family members and it's complicated for us," said Mathieu Kanyama, health promotion manager at the Beni Ebola treatment center run by ALIMA Alliance for International Medical Action. "Here, there are doctors, not magicians."

Nearly a year after the start of the epidemic, which killed more than 1,700 people and was declared a global health emergency this month, an increase in the number of deaths in the community is fueling a resurgence of deaths. Ebola in Beni. During a two-week period only in July, 30 people died at home.

Health teams now go door-to-door with megaphones trying to get the message across.

"Behind every dead person, there is a person who has a fever," said Dr. Gaston Tshapenda, responsible for the Ebola response in Beni for the Congo Ministry of Health.

Fear of treatment centers

Many people still do not believe that the Ebola virus is real, say health experts, hindering efforts to control the spread of the disease.

The symptoms of Ebola also look like common causes of death such as malaria and typhoid. Therefore, those who are afraid to visit a treatment center often try to self-treat at home with paracetamol to reduce fever.

But Ebola, unlike these other diseases, requires that the patient be isolated and away from the comfort of his family.

Dr. Maurice Kakule, who became one of the first patients with this disease after treating a sick woman in her clinic, is now trying to help the sick in Beni, near the Ugandan border.

He and other survivors, now immune to the disease, are running a motorcycle taxi ambulance. After receiving a phone call for help, they go home, rebadure the sick and take them to treatment without infecting others.

The most common fear is to leave an Ebola treatment center in a body bag, says Kakule.

"Some have heard of the Ebola problem but there have been no survivors in their families," he said. "Since they have parents who died in a treatment center, they think that people are being killed there and that is why they categorically refuse to go."

Humanizing care

They are also afraid of dying alone, only surrounded by health personnel covered with protective equipment from head to toe.

In an attempt to humanize patient care in isolation, the ALIMA Ebola Treatment Center in Beni places some patients in their own transparent room called "CUBE", where they can see visitors from their bed. Others share a room with another patient and a glbad window where their loved ones can meet.

Although there is no approved treatment for Ebola, patients from eastern Congo can participate in clinical trials. This is a welcome change from the 2014-2016 epidemic in West Africa, when many patients entered Ebola centers to never be alive again. More than 11,000 people died.

Nevertheless, the measures necessary to prevent the spread of the Ebola virus remain difficult to accept for many people.

"We can not forget the fact that when you have Ebola, you are placed somewhere far away from your family, with a 50% chance of dying alone from your loved ones," said Dr. Joanne Liu, president of Doctors Without . Borders, which helps fight the epidemic. "I do not blame people for not finding that attractive, despite the fact that we have a clinical trial going on."

The day after the death of Lahya's baby parents, a morgue team in protective gear transported their bodies carefully wrapped in a truck to a funeral procession in a Muslim cemetery on the outskirts of the city.

In the background, the noise of workers pounding the floor while they were installing more in the nearby treatment center to cope with the increasing workload.

Lahya developed a fever but her Ebola test was negative. The child with round cheeks and gold earrings is in an orphanage at the moment, while his 3-year-old sister is being cared for by neighbors who hope to raise them both.

But the sisters will have to wait a little longer to be reunited: their adoptive father and their former nanny have both been tested positive for the Ebola virus and are being treated.

"I lost all my family"

The fateful decision to avoid treatment centers haunts survivors like Asifiwe Kavira, 24, who has contracted the Ebola virus with eight of her relatives.

Health teams went to Butembo to try to persuade them to seek treatment. However, most family members reported wanting to cure their fever at home. After three days of negotiations, Kavira finally agreed to ask for help, believing that he was about to die.

She would be the only one to survive.

His mother, grandmother, brother and four other family members all died at home. An older sister joined her at the treatment center, but medical care arrived too late.

"I now tell people that the Ebola virus exists," said Kavira, "because it's so that I've lost my entire family."

Credit: Voice of America (VOA)