They say that Ebola risk in America is low, but can you imagine the public relations nightmare here if any of these patients were to enter our country?
This is Richard Preston's "The Hot Zone" come to life.
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ABC News, 5-28-26
'Out of control': Doctors on the front line of Ebola outbreak speak out. Health officials believe the Ebola strain was undetected for up to three months.
Doctors and
public health workers at the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak in eastern
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) told ABC News that the deadly virus
is still spreading at an alarming rate.
“The
outbreak is completely out of control,” said Dr. Richard Kojan in an
interview from the city of Bunia in Ituri province, which is the hardest
hit.
Kojan,
who has been involved in fighting previous Ebola outbreaks in central
and western Africa and is president of the Alliance for International
Medical Action, said deep mistrust within some local communities is
hampering efforts to contain the virus.
Another
clinician, Dr. Richard Lokudi, who is the director of the main hospital
in Mongbwalu, the hardest hit area, told ABC News that the disease was
spreading “at an exponential speed.”
Lokudi said seven symptomatic patients suspected of having Ebola had recently “escaped” from Mongbwalu Hospital.
This was creating “chains and chains of contamination,” Lokudi said, adding that this was making the virus “difficult to fight.”
According
to the World Health Organization, more than 1,000 suspected cases of a
rare strain of Ebola, known as Bundibugyo, have been identified in the
eastern DRC and more than 230 suspected deaths from the virus have been
recorded.
There is currently
no vaccine for the Bundibugyo strain. Seven confirmed cases have also
been identified in neighboring Uganda, the WHO said.
Last week, the WHO declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.
Jeremy
Konyndyk, who worked as a senior official at USAID under Presidents
Barack Obama and Joe Biden and is now president of Refugees
International, said the outbreak had already reached an “explosive”
level of transmission.
Konyndyk, who is based in Maryland, described the situation in central Africa as “about
as urgent as any Ebola response has ever been” and said the 1,000
suspected cases were “almost certainly the tip of the iceberg” and
“perhaps even an undercount by a factor of two or three.”
Health
officials believe the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola had been circulating,
undetected, in the Ituri province for up to three months before it was
officially identified. The unusual strain was harder to identify via
testing.
However,
levels of mistrust within local communities toward measures to contain
the virus, as well as skepticism that the virus even exists, are now
hampering efforts to stem the outbreak, health officials say.
Kojan
said there is currently a lack of laboratory testing capacity in the
region, which is needed for accurate diagnosis and effective contact
tracing.
The lack of lab capacity means symptomatic patients suspected of having
the virus can wait for days for test results, increasing the risk of
them leaving isolation prematurely, Kojan said.
“People don't trust that, you know, Ebola is a reality,” he said.
The
Congolese clinician said he was on “the front line” without access to a
laboratory, meaning he was struggling to build trust with patients.
New cases every day
Both Lokudi and Kojan said their healthcare facilities were receiving new suspected cases of Ebola every day.
Amidst the high levels of mistrust, there has also been growing anger
toward strict healthcare procedures, which are necessary to safely bury
the dead and stop the virus from spreading.
The two Congolese
doctors confirmed reports that isolation tents and healthcare facilities
had been set on fire by angry crowds in recent days.
In
an exchange of messages with ABC News on Tuesday, Lokudi said the
police and military were now protecting his hospital, but he said angry
groups of youths had still been gathering nearby.
He
said that in some cases, officials were unable to safely access remote
areas of Ituri province to investigate suspected deaths from the virus.
Lokudi
described the situation as “really concerning,” saying that if teams do
not go to such areas, then family members face a high risk of catching
the virus if they themselves bury their loved ones.
Ebola
is transmitted via bodily fluids, so treating sick patients and
handling the deceased should only be done by healthcare teams in
protective suits. Ideally, a victim’s home should also be sprayed down
with disinfectant.
In
the remote rural communities affected, these vital protective measures
can run contrary to local burial practices, which has been a source of
many people’s anger.
Kojan
described a lack of masks and protective clothing as another “really
big problem.” Both he and Lokudi said more adequately trained healthcare
professionals were needed on the ground to raise awareness and
implement barriers to stop the spread of the virus.
Cuts to U.S. programs created difficulties
Konyndyk said significant cuts to U.S. humanitarian aid in the DRC had made things harder.
“We're kind of fighting this one with several hands tied behind our back,” Konyndyk told ABC News.
“When
we have fought Ebola in the past on this scale, it has been a
combination of the Ministry of Health, WHO, USAID, CDC," he said.
"USAID
is fully gone, CDC is badly weakened. WHO has been badly weakened, the
U.S., of course, withdrew from WHO and cut off all funding,” Konyndyk
added.
The former USAID
official said in an interview that they were “almost certain” that if
USAID were still in place, this outbreak would have been caught earlier.
Konyndyk
said he believed earlier reports of “an unknown viral hemorrhagic fever
outbreak” in the region “would have been brought to the attention of
the U.S. mission” in the DRC.
“I've
talked with some of the members who worked on that team, who were
forced out of the government, who would say things like, look, I would
be on the phone every week with health leaders in this part of the
country,” Konyndyk told ABC News.
“I
think the U.S. visibility on that diminished badly and that contributed
certainly to the US being slow to wake up to this, but also to the
world being slow to wake up to it,” the humanitarian leader said.
A
White House official said the claim that cuts to U.S. aid have affected
the response to the Ebola outbreak in the DRC was “ridiculous.”
“You
could just as easily say people died because England didn’t give enough
money or Canada didn’t give more or China didn’t. Why not blame the
other countries who don’t do any foreign aid?” the official added.
The
Trump administration has argued that its “America First Foreign
Assistance programs” are intertwined with broader foreign policy goals
and the national interest.
“The
United States has saved more lives, and continues to save more lives,
than any other country in the world, and we’re going to continue to do
it,” the White House official said in a statement. "We’re not going to
continue to pour billions of dollars out the door of American taxpayer
funds for programs that don’t work and in some cases were flat-out
corrupt."
Back in the affected area of the DRC, both doctors interviewed by ABC said they had messages for the U.S. and the world.
International support is needed urgently “on all levels,” according to Lokudi.
Kojan said he is appealing to the world that this is about people’s “humanity.”
“People are really scared. It’s our humanity … so my message is, you know, we need attention,” he said.
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