On the frontlines of the Ebola Crisis
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What is the current Ebola outbreak situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo?
A deadly Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is causing growing concern among health authorities. More than 280 cases have now been confirmed and the outbreak is unfolding in a region already affected by conflict and displacement. Joining me now from Bunia in the DRC is CNN's Chief International Correspondent, Clarissa Ward. Clarissa, good morning to you. Hello, Clarissa.
Hello.
Hi, Clarissa. Hi, sorry. Good morning. That's OK.
The lines here are not fabulous.
OK, well, that's understandable. Clarissa, how serious is the situation on the ground in Bunia at the moment?
Well, I would say, Dave, there has definitely been a big surge in the amount of aid and resources coming in, the infrastructure being built up to help try to contain this vicious outbreak. You're seeing various groups, Aleema, MSF, IMC, who have been furiously working around the clock to construct these temporary Ebola treatment centers, which are a crucial piece of the puzzle because they ensure that patients with Ebola are being isolated. The problem up until now was that a lot of these hospitals, especially in more rural areas, had wards where there would be Ebola patients and non-Ebola patients in the next door bed to each other. And obviously that presents serious, serious problems. So definitely seeing some improvements, but it is going to be a very tough few months ahead.
Clarissa, you were allowed access to one of the hospital's red zones right at the centre of this outbreak. For our listeners, can you describe what you saw?
Well, the first thing to mention is that to go into the so-called red zone where suspected Ebola cases are kept, you have to put on an insane amount of personal protective equipment for obvious reasons. But the first thing I noticed was for doctors who are wearing this every single day going in and out of the red zone, it is just exhausting. It's incredibly hot, unbearably hot because there's no breathing material. Very heavy, difficult to breathe. The thing you notice once you actually go into the tent where we met several patients who were suffering from Ebola is just how vicious and awful this virus is. We met a 10-year-old boy who was struggling to keep food down, who had terrible diarrhea, who was improving and dying.
which is a good thing, but who still just looked so painfully dazed and ill with blisters all over his mouth and clearly kind of just in a lot of pain. And I think also it's very, very difficult for these patients because there is a dehumanizing component to this. They are sitting there in their darkest moment, feeling so desperately ill, fearing for their lives. They can't be next to their loved ones. The only people they interact with are wearing hazmat suits. So there's no personal touch. And you really had a sense of how absolutely petrifying this is for the victims.
It must be petrifying as well for the health care workers, Clarissa.
It absolutely is, and they are unquestionably the heroes of this whole crisis. There are now much more resources in terms of PPE, but earlier on particularly, and of course in rural areas especially, you had healthcare workers going into these red zones with minimal PPE. And according to one NGO here, Aleema, more than 40 health care workers are believed to have contracted Ebola. So that's a huge sacrifice that you're seeing from these doctors and nurses and health care workers who have been going in to the red zone every single day, regardless of the risk to their own livelihood.
How are healthcare workers responding to the Ebola crisis on the ground?
And there is no vaccine for this particular strain of Ebola, which adds to the pressure.
There's no vaccine, there's no treatment. And I think it's important to underscore so your listeners get a sense of how this spreads so quickly for so long without being detected. This is a different strain of Ebola to the Zaire strain, which is the more common one that we saw in 2014, again in 2019. And so in the early days when people were showing these symptoms, They would take the Ebola test, but because it was for the Zaire strain, the tests were coming back negative.
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