Chapter 1: What is the current status of the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo?
The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo is outpacing response efforts, according to the World Health Organization. Despite an upscaling of operations in the region, health care staff are struggling to contain the disease as case numbers rise. Tensions are growing among locals and aid workers with a number of attacks on health care facilities in recent days.
Meanwhile, neighbouring countries like Uganda have been urged to take immediate action to limit further spread of the disease. The CEO of Trocra, Sean Farrell, has recently returned from Uganda. He joins me on the line now. Morning, Sean. Good morning, David. Thanks a million for joining us. I know you have staff in Bunia, which is at the epicentre of the outbreak.
What are things like on the ground there at the moment, Sean?
So I would say for our staff, it's really two major feelings. First of all, concern for their own families themselves as they respond, but also concern for the communities in which they work. And the second one is, I think, from talking to the staff in Bunia, a real determination to make a huge difference and to try and stop the spread of this disease.
And particularly in some of the huge camps where we work on the edge of Bunia. Maybe one thing for your listeners, David, that's maybe not known, while Ettore is about the size of Ireland, with a population of five million people. Bunya, which is the main town in Ettore, is at the epicentre of this. But there are huge camps of displaced people not just in Eturi, but also around Bunia.
So of that 5 million people, due to the ongoing conflict in eastern DR Congo, about 1 million people are displaced in camps. So this obviously is a huge challenge in terms of coordination and response.
Yeah, and I presume they're probably in crowded conditions there, which obviously makes spread of the disease easier.
It does, and it obviously makes things like what we learned from the last outbreak in 2018 in DRC, what we learned from the 2014 outbreak in Sierra Leone, is that things like tracing and quarantine is key in terms of preventing and managing the spread.
So it obviously makes it much more difficult to do adequate tracing and particularly to do quarantine when we're in a situation where so many people are displaced but also in a situation where there are multiple armed groups operating in the area. We had an attack last week, for example, that killed 17 people in one village.
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Chapter 2: What challenges are healthcare workers facing on the ground in Bunia?
have taken measures to try and ensure the border is now being closed with DR Congo. Although it is difficult, it is a long land border. There's a lot of informal trading and travel across between the two countries. But I would be much more concerned about the future and further spread in Eastern Congo than I would be, for example, in Uganda.
And part of the problem appears to be that the cases were identified late, partly because this is a different strain to the one that health authorities might have been more familiar with and therefore the virus got a head start on the authorities, more or less.
It did. It got a real head start. I think there's two things here. I think you're right that the particular strain, the Bundabudjo strain, doesn't have a treatment or a vaccine. And the initial testing was for the Zaire strain, which does. So it got a late start. But I also think what this points to is just the aid cuts that we've all dealt with globally.
And now we're seeing some of the prices that are being paid around aid cuts. You know, the Trump administration cuts
to the World Health Organization, to the CDC, the Center for Disease Control, and also the cuts that the local health systems have taken in countries like DR Congo has meant that this was caught late and also that the response to it is always going to be behind when you basically gut your health system.
So I think one of the reflections for us in Throkra has certainly been that these aid cuts that have been foisted on poorer countries we're now really beginning to see some of the prices of these cuts.
And are we seeing anybody else on the international stage stepping in to make up the difference?
We're not seeing anyone step in that can make up the difference to the level of what was cut in terms of the US cuts were draconian. So was the UK cuts. And what we've seen is countries across Europe follow suit in a series of aid cuts. 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.
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