David Jones

Absolutely.

It's tense, to be quite honest with you.

This is a disease that is well known amongst the population.

There have been outbreaks in that area as recently as 2019.

And the community definitely remember the kind of impact it can have on both individuals, but their families and the community, and with a huge impact longer term as well.

Well, DLC is an enormous country, so it's about 1,800 kilometres away from the epicentre of the issue.

However, this is a disease that's spread very far and wide, very, very quickly.

Absolutely.

So the epicenter of the outbreak is in a province called Ituri in the northeast of the country.

It's home to about five million people and it's right on the border with South Sudan and Uganda.

And it's really at the center of a very busy commercial corridor, which is one of the elements that really makes this particularly challenging.

And that's a very dynamic, busy social culture already.

But it's also on this major commercial corridor, which is part of the reason it's spread across to Uganda so quickly and also spread as far south as places 700 kilometers away.

away from the actual epicentre.

But it's a very busy place.

There's lots of interconnectivity between the different towns and locations, lots of busyness, lots of movement, and that's what makes this even more concerning.

Absolutely.

And that's exactly what we've seen with these cases popping up at very large distances from the epicentre.

I think it's been very far and wide, most likely because of where it's actually situated and the business of it.

Some of the symptoms can take a while to come through and then actually having the right testing equipment to be able to identify this properly is a major issue.