Ebola outbreak: Patients flee as hospitals come under attack in DRC

Amid the outbreak that has wreaked havoc on an already dilapidated healthcare system, attacks at hospitals across DR Congo have only added to the strain. As a result, many patients are fleeing healthcare facilities mid-treatment.

At least three such incidents have occurred in the northeastern province of Ituri, where the first Ebola cases were reported, including two over the weekend targeting the same hospital that permitted more than two dozen patients to run away.

The attacks, some of which are carried out by civilians over the handling of dead bodies, have brought back painful memories of a 2018-20 outbreak in eastern Congo that killed more than 25 health workers amid widespread violence.

Dr Richard Lokodu, medical director of the Mongbwalu General Referral Hospital, which came under attack over the weekend, said, "There is denial of the disease within the population, with some members wanting to claim the bodies of suspected and/or confirmed cases."

More from Health

Patients flee

At the Mongbwalu General Referral Hospital in Mongbwalu, where many cases have been reported, 18 Ebola patients fled Saturday after “unidentified individuals” burned tents, erected by medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières, where patients were being isolated, Lokodu said.

Four lab results from those patients have come back — three negative results and one positive result, he said.

“So we have one confirmed case of Ebola that continues to circulate in the community and evade the response,” Lokodu said.

On Sunday, the hospital came under four waves of attacks by young people mobilised by relatives of a Christian religious leader who died of Ebola, he said.

Seven other patients escaped and Congolese police and soldiers had to mobilise to restore order, he said.

A suspected Ebola patient who was in critical condition with haemorrhaging died in the second attack while trying to flee from his bed, Lokodu added.

'Likely to get worse'

The authorities are playing catch-up as the Ebola virus outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda has far outpaced the response, World Health Organisation (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has warned.

At an online meeting of the African Union, Ghebreyesus said a delay in detecting ebola cases meant the authorities were now “playing catch-up” and the epidemic was likely to get worse before it gets better.

Tedros said containing the ongoing outbreak was complicated by the fact that the DRC’s Ituri and North Kivu provinces were highly insecure and there were no approved vaccines for the Bundibugyo virus, the species of ebola driving the outbreak.

With inputs from agencies