Seán Farrell

The two outliers to this has been Ireland and Spain.

who have maintained their aid programmes.

But apart from that, I think what we're beginning to see now is some of the real and devastating impacts of these cuts that many, many countries, including the US and the UK, have made.

Yeah, so I think one of the challenges really with this is that, you know, Ebola does not die with its victim, unfortunately, and the body remains highly infectious after death.

And we saw, and I saw this problem myself in Sierra Leone when I managed the program there for Throkara in the height of the Ebola outbreaks in Sierra Leone.

And one of the challenges is that there are very traditional practices of

around washing and touching the body after death.

And these practices are equally present in DR Congo as they were in Sierra Leone.

And one of the real challenges of this is that it is a huge super spreader event when these traditional ceremonies take place.

So one of the things that the province has done, it has banned wakes.

It has said that burials must only be done by specialised teams.

that antibodies can only be carried in medical vehicles, not in regular cars, and it has limited public gatherings to about 50 people.

But one of the challenges, I think, and this is where I think the work that we do and our partners comes in, is that there's huge misinformation online about Ebola.

For example, accusing health workers of bringing it into the community, as opposed to the fact that health workers are going there trying to manage the response.

So I think for us and the partners that we work with, I think one of the things that we're lucky we've worked there since the 1990s, the local organisations we work with are known, they're trusted, they've worked in these areas for decades.

And one of the big pieces of work that we're going to be doing and are doing is around community engagement, engaging with leaders, education to the communities to try and stop the misinformation spread that unfortunately

as we've seen in the news, leads to, like what we saw, the burning of tents at health centres, but also attacks on health workers.

And a lot of this is just the spread of misinformation online and a misunderstanding about what is the role of health workers and local organisations.

It is going to be difficult, but I think

There are going to be two parts to this.