Grief and fear grow over Ebola outbreak in Eastern Congo

At the Bunia General Hospital in the heart of eastern Congo’s Ebola outbreak on Thursday, a mother who lost her son wailed in the courtyard while other relatives of patients sat silently nearby. The special treatment center that is meant to treat Ebola patients in isolation is not yet operating, but families gathered in the courtyard waiting for news of their loved ones.

Aboubacar Matsura said he was there for his brother, who was gravely ill and had been sent to Bunia General Hospital from another clinic in the city in order to be tested for Ebola. “That's what we're here for, and it hurts me so much to hear this, but we don't have a choice, because this is health,” he said.

Jean Paul Yaotumba, a member of the hospital’s Ebola response team, oversaw healthcare workers as they disinfected a car that brought a suspected Ebola patient to the hospital the previous day. Yaotumba said suspected cases continue to arrive at Bunia general hospital daily.

“Everywhere, if there are cases of patients who are in bad shape, suspected cases, we directly transfer the patients here to the general hospital,” he said. Congo’s health minister said early this week that special Ebola treatment centers were to be set up in Bunia, Rwampara and Mongbwalu, the three hardest hit sites in this outbreak.

A treatment center in Rwampara, which was also not yet operational but housed bodies of Ebola victims, was burned on Thursday when a group of young people were upset that they could not take their loved one’s body home for a burial.

The World Health Organization has declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern. The organization’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said he was deeply concerned about the scale and speed of the epidemic, and it's likely much larger than the official case count.

The WHO’s chief in Congo said the outbreak could last at least two months.Investigations are continuing into the source of the outbreak. The London-based MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis estimates that cases have been substantially undercounted and that the actual number could already exceed 1,000.