Treatment centres assist in Congo's Ebola outbreak but face old hurdles

WhenEsperance Nzavaki heard she was cured of Ebola after three weeksof cutting-edge care at a medical centre in eastern Congo, she raised her arms to the sky with joy andpraised the Lord.

Her recovery is testament to the effectiveness of a newtreatment, which isolates patients in futuristic cube-shapedmobile units with transparent walls and gloved access, so healthworkers no longer need to don cumbersome protective gear.

"I started to feel sick, with a fever and pain all over mybody. I thought it was typhoid. I took medicine but it didn'twork," Nzavaki told Reuters in Beni, a city of several hundredthousand, where officials are racing to contain the virus.

"Then an ambulance came and brought me to hospital for Ebolatreatment. Now I praise God I'm healed."

The fight against Ebola has advanced more in recent yearsthan in any since it was discovered near the Congo River in1976. When the worst outbreak killed 11,300 people in WestAfrica in 2013-2016, there was no vaccine and treatment amountedto little more than keeping patients comfortable and hydrated.

Now there's an experimental vaccine manufactured by Merckwhich already this year helped quash an earlier outbreakof this strain of the virus on the other side of the country inunder three months. And there are the cube treatment centres,pioneered by the Senegal-based medical charity, ALIMA.

If the population of Beni continues to show this distrust this disease will consume the whole town.-AlainMulonda

"With this system where there are not people donningmasks, the patients feel reassured and perceive that there islife here," said Claude Mahoudeau, ALIMA's coordinator for theEbola outbreak in Beni.

In addition, three experimental treatments have been rolledout for the first time, offering patients additional reason tohope that their diagnosis is not a death sentence.

Yet even the smartest science can do little about themarauding rebel groups and widespread fear and mistrust thatcould yet scupper efforts to contain Congo's tenth outbreak ofthe deadly hemorrhagic fever.

The latest outbreak is so far believed to have killed 90people since July and infected another 40.

The stakes are high, not just for health reasons. Ebolacould complicate Congo's first democratic change of power, theholding of a Dec. 23 election to replace President Joseph Kabilathat is already two years late.

Mistrust a challenge

The affected North Kivu and Ituri provinces have been atinder box of armed rebellion and ethnic killing since two civilwars in the late 1990s. Some areas near the epicentre requirearmed escorts to reach because of insecurity. Two South Africanpeacekeepers there were wounded in a rebel ambush last week.

And last week, authorities confirmed the first death fromEbola in the major trading hub of Butembo, a city of almost amillion people near the border with Uganda, dampening hopes thatthe virus was being brought under control.

On Monday, the World Health Organization (WHO) said morethan 60 of its experts had arrived in the city and that a mobilelaboratory had started testing samples.

"Ebola does not exist in Beni," resident Tresor Malala said,shaking his head. "For a long time, people got sick with fever,diarrhea, vomiting and they healed. Now someone gets a fever,they get sent to the Ebola treatment centre and then they die."

Taxi driver Mosaste Kala was equally skeptical: "The onlypeople dying are the ones going to the ... treatment centre."

Tackling these perceptions will be crucial if authoritiesare to halt the epidemic.

At a news conference on Saturday, Health Minister Oly IlungaKalenga acknowledged that "community resistance is the firstchallenge to the response to the epidemic."

In the district of Ndindi, in Beni, Ebola is spreading dueto the community's reluctance to cooperate with health workers,
the ministry says. Some locals have hidden sick relatives orrefused to be vaccinated.

The problem, says school teacher Alain Mulonda, many ofwhose pupils were being kept at home by anxious parents, is thatlocals have little understanding of Ebola.

"If the population of Beni continues to show this distrust,"he said, "this disease will consume the whole town."