EXCLUSIVE: The Red Cross has urgently called for help in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where the organisation’s heroic response is being hobbled by misinformation
An Ebola misinformation epidemic has led scared members of the public in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to wrongly believe medics are infecting people with the virus, the Red Cross has warned.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has warned that the vicious parallel epidemic is exacerbating the outbreak of the Bundibugyo strain, which has been behind thousands of infections in the DRC and Uganda since May this year. Volunteers have been abused, medical tents burned down, and hospitals pelted by projectiles by angry locals who are struggling to “grasp the reality of the disease”, officials claimed.
In some cases, misinformation has warped public perception so significantly that people have been led to believe doctors are injecting people with the virus.
Speaking to The Mirror, Alex Lock, a communications officer at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) who is on the ground in the DRC, said: “We face mistrust spreading all over the communities.
“Some people believe this disease doesn’t even exist. Other people believe that hospitals and treatment centers are the place where you get injected with Ebola.”
He said the ICRC has responded by mobilising hundreds of people who are volunteering with the organisation, many of them community members, to try and convince them they’re there to help. Alex continued: “Those guys are community members first of all, and they speak to communities so that they can understand and accept our life-saving messages.”
The DRC Ministry of Health reported that the disease crossed a grim milestone this week, with a total of 1,094 confirmed cases, 277 confirmed related deaths, and 387 hospitalisations in isolation.
The worst affected province in the DRC is Ituri, which has the vast majority of confirmed cases at 997 across 22 separate health zones. The remaining cases are spread across North Kivu and South Kivu, where 94 and three infections have been reported across 11 and one health zones respectively.
The virus has also spread overseas, with France confirming its first cases of Ebola on Wednesday in a doctor who had returned from a humanitarian mission to the DRC.
The French health ministry said on Wednesday that the doctor is in a stable condition after being “immediately admitted to a specialised facility”. While the DRC outbreak has been elevated to a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) by the World Health Organization (WHO), a designation once assigned to Covid-19, it said the risk to the rest of the world remains low.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said there was “no need to panic”, while French officials said the risk Ebola could spread to its national population was “very low”.
But the situation in the DRC was dangerous and threatened to get much worse, especially with misinformation thrown in, with Alex warning the “cruel reality” is that the disease “can touch anybody”. He said: “I just attended a safe and dignified burial for a confirmed Ebola case.”
“The kid was only 6 months old. The cruel reality is that Ebola can touch anybody and it continues to spread as some people don’t even believe the disease is real.
“But the only way to fight against this outbreak is breaking the chain of contamination with appropriate measures: going to the hospital as soon as we detect suspect symptoms and carrying out very crucial activities like safe and dignified burial because even after death the body remains highly contagious.
“We need to perform early detections as much as possible, and we also need those life-saving messages being spread all over the community so everybody can get involved for the appropriate response.
“Sometimes in humanitarian activities, some people might see the communities like the beneficiaries. But they are not just beneficiaries; they’re also active responders. So, we really need them to be aware of what’s going on and spread the right message so that everybody can adopt the right behaviors to save lives.”
