DRC: Fear of catching Ebola sees use of hospital health services drop

Fear of catching the Ebola is seeing some residents in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s north-east Ituri province avoiding hospitals for essential healthcare services, including for births and immunisations.

“Some of the referred patients lost their lives, which has increased fear in the community and discouraged people from seeking care at our facility," said Losha Dhedda, head nurse at Bunia’s Bigo Hospital.

UNICEF says that data from local authorities shows a drop of 42 per cent in the use of services between April and June in the primary outbreak hotspots of Bunia, Mongbwalu, Nizi, and Rwampara,

According to figures published by the World Health Organization, there have been 3,874 confirmed cases including 1,751 deaths in the DRC since the start of the outbreak in mid-May.

Dhedda said many healthcare workers at Bigo Hospital have been afraid to treat Ebola patients because of the lack of adequate personal protective equipment.

"The infection prevention and control kits we received today will help us strengthen these measures,” he said adding that they can now can “treat patients without fear".

WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who travelled to the country earlier this week, said the outbreak is spreading faster than “our scale-up of the response”

Posting on X after meeting organisations involved in the response effort, he said new cases had doubled in some hotspots “over the past week alone".

He said there was an urgent need to "massively scale up all our efforts” to combat the outbreak.

Tedros said this included “reaching every affected community despite insecurity and displacement”, strengthening coordination and ensuring health workers have the correct protection and training.

The WHO chief was previously in the DRC at the end of May in the north-eastern province of Ituri where nearly 90 per cent of Ebola cases have been identified.

The five affected provinces in eastern DRC have a weak state presence and healthcare infrastructure is largely lacking.

The United States announced Wednesday that it had allocated more than $242 million in additional funding to combat the worsening outbreak.