India-Africa summit postponed as aid groups in Congo warn Ebola outbreak is ‘gaining momentum’

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

Healthcare workers and aid groups in eastern Congo said Thursday they are in dire need of more supplies and staff to respond to the rare Ebola outbreak, as armed groups continue to threaten the safety of a region already grappling with displacement and a humanitarian crisis.

“The situation is worrying because this is gaining momentum,” Hama Amado, the Bunia field coordinator for Alima, an aid group, told The Associated Press. “This is spreading in many areas. So everyone must mobilize.”

He added: “We are still far from saying that the situation is under control.”

There is no available vaccine or medicine for the Bundibugyo strain, which spread undetected for weeks following the first known death while authorities tested for another, more common, Ebola virus and came up negative.

Healthcare workers and aid groups are now playing a catch up game with an outbreak that experts say is much larger than what has been officially reported. So far, there are 139 suspected deaths and almost 600 suspected cases.

The World Health Organization, which noted a low risk globally, has said “patient zero” has not been found.

While almost 20 tons of aid has been airlifted to Bunia, the site of the first known death, doctors using out-of-date facemasks were tending to suspected Ebola patients in general wards because of the lack of isolation space.

Early detection of the virus is key in saving lives, but the region’s already weak health infrastructure and surveillance capacity has been further weakened by international aid cuts, experts say. There are over 920,000 internally displaced people in Ituri, a province that has become the hot spot of the outbreak, according to the U.N.

“Communities in eastern DRC are already facing immense pressure from conflict, displacement, and a collapsing health system,” said Dr. Lievin Bangali, Senior Health Coordinator for the International Rescue Committee in DRC. “Years of underfunding, compounded by recent cuts to front line health and outbreak preparedness programming, have weakened the ability to detect and respond to outbreaks quickly.”

The group said it had to stop its surveillance activities in three out of five areas in Ituri over the last year because of funding cuts.

A mother watches her son ‘bleeding and vomiting’

At a treatment center in Rwampara, healthcare workers in protective gear handled the bodies of suspected Ebola victims.

Families who tend to wash loved ones’ bodies themselves watched on as workers disinfected the corpses and placed them into coffins to be taken to secure burial sites. Some relatives burst into tears.

The disease struck suddenly, they said, describing a rapid deterioration after symptoms were mistaken for illnesses such as malaria.

“He told me his heart was hurting,” said Botwine Swanze, who lost her son. “Then he started crying because of the pain. Then he started bleeding and vomiting a lot.”

The Ebola virus is highly contagious and spreads in the human population through contact with bodily fluids such as vomit, blood or semen. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain and at times internal and external bleeding.

‘We have no protection’

Schools and churches remain open in Bunia. Some residents have started wearing facemasks, which have become harder to find.

“It’s truly sad and painful because we’ve already been through a security crisis, and now Ebola is here too,” said Justin Ndasi, a resident.

There is growing anxiety at health centers.

A Doctors Without Borders team identified suspected cases over the weekend at the city’s Salama hospital but found no available isolation ward in the area, Trish Newport, an emergency program manager, said on social media.

“Every health facility they called said, ‘We’re full of suspect cases. We don’t have any space.’ This gives you a vision of how crazy it is right now,” she said.

In Bambu General Hospital elsewhere in Ituri province, suspected Ebola patients shared a ward with others injured or ill.

In Mongbwalu, where the body of the first known death was taken, the nearby border with Uganda remains open and gold mining continues, said Chérubin Kuku Ndilawa, a civil society leader, highlighting the difficulty of containing the virus.

“There’s no panic. People continue with their normal lives, but they’re also starting to spread the word,” said Ndilawa, and noted a lack of public handwashing stations.

It was very different at Mongbwalu General Hospital, where Dr. Didier Pay said it was treating around 30 Ebola patients, and a student from the local medical technology institute died on Wednesday.

“The patients are scattered here and there in rather unusual conditions,” Dr. Richard Lokudu, the hospital’s medical director, told the AP. “We hope for the proper triage and isolation facilities to be installed today, and if that doesn’t happen, we will be completely overwhelmed.”

They are understaffed and not trained to handle suspected cases, he said. If confirmed cases surge, “we have no protection.”

WHO chief says the ‘scale of the epidemic is much larger’

WHO has declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern. The organization’s Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Tuesday said he was “deeply concerned about the scale and speed of the epidemic,” while WHO’s chief in Congo said the outbreak could last at least two months.

Investigations are continuing into the source of the outbreak, but “given the scale, we are thinking that it has started probably a couple of months ago,” said Anaïs Legand, a viral hemorrhagic fevers expert at the WHO.

So far, 51 cases have been confirmed in Congo’s northern provinces of Ituri and North Kivu, and two cases in Uganda, Dr. Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday. But “the scale of the epidemic is much larger,” he said.

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. “The true magnitude remains uncertain,” it said.

Insecurity continues

Long the scene of attacks by an array of armed groups, the region’s volatility now further complicates efforts to handle the crisis. Local leaders said an attack by militants linked to the Islamic State group killed at least 17 people on Tuesday in Alima, a village in Ituri.

Fighters with the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), which has ties to IS, killed civilians with machetes and firearms, burned down houses and business and took several people hostage. Civil society groups warned of other villages in the region facing a threat of attack.

The number of ADF fighters in Congo is unclear, but they are a significant presence in the region and regularly attack civilians. Another armed group that is active in the region is CODECO, a loose association of militia groups mainly from the ethnic Lendu farming community.

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Associated Press writers Jamey Keaten in Geneva; Jean Yves Kamale in Kinshasa, Congo; Wilson McMakin in Dakar, Senegal contributed to this report.

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For more on Africa and development: https://apnews.com/hub/africa-pulse

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The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Justin Kabumba And Monika Pronczuk, The Associated Press

by The Canadian Press