Second Ebola treatment center set on fire in epicenter of disease’s outbreak

Angry residents of a town at the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo attacked and set fire to a tent that was part of a health center where people are being treated for the virus, staff said Saturday. It was the second attack of this type in the region in a week.

No one was injured in the attack, according to initial reports, but as patients ran to escape the fire, 18 people suspected of being infected with Ebola left the facility and are now missing, the director of a local hospital said.

Angry residents arrived at the clinic in the town of Mongbwalu on Friday evening and set fire to a tent set up for suspected and confirmed Ebola cases by the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders, Dr. Richard Lokudi, director of the Mongbwalu hospital, told The Associated Press.

“We strongly condemn this act, as it caused panic among staff and also resulted in 18 suspected cases leaking to the community,” he said.

On Thursday, another treatment center, in the town of Rwampara, was burned down after family members were barred from retrieving the body of a man suspected of having died of Ebola.

Burials of Ebola victims spark anger and frustration

The bodies of people who have died from Ebola can be highly contagious and lead to further spread when people prepare them for burial and gather for funerals. The dangerous work of burying suspected victims is handled wherever possible by authorities, which can be met with protests from families and friends.

A community burial of Ebola patients in Rwampara took place Saturday under heavy security as tensions between health workers and the local community ran high, said David Basima, a Red Cross team leader overseeing the burials.

Armed soldiers and police monitored the burials as Red Cross workers dressed in white protective suits lowered sealed coffins into the ground. The crying family members stood at a distance.

Basima said his team, after arriving at the scene, “encountered a lot of difficulties, including resistance from young people and the community.”

“We were forced to alert the authorities so that they could help us, just to be safe,” Basima explained.

Authorities in northeastern Congo on Friday banned funeral vigils and gatherings of more than 50 people in a bid to curb the spread of the virus.

Epidemic poses high risk for Congo, says WHO

The World Health Organization said the outbreak now poses a “very high” risk to Congo – up from a previous categorization of “high” – but the risk of the disease spreading globally remains low.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Sunday that 101 cases had been confirmed in Congo.

There is no vaccine available against Bundibugyo virusa rare type of Ebola, which spread undetected for weeks in Congo’s Ituri province after the first known death, while authorities tested another, more common Ebola virus and came back negative. There are now more than 900 suspected cases and 204 suspected deaths, but more are expected as surveillance expands, Ghebreyesus said.

An American doctor working with a missionary group in Congo tested positiveand several others would have been exposed.

Dr Jean Kaseya, director general of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the response to the outbreak must include building trust with communities.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies announced on Saturday that three of its volunteers had died due to the outbreak in Mongbwalu. The agency said it believed the three health workers contracted the virus on March 27 while handling corpses as part of a humanitarian mission unrelated to Ebola.

If confirmed, it would significantly push back the timeline of the epidemic compared to the first death confirmed at the end of April in the town of Bunia, the capital of Ituri.

US excludes green card holders from Ebola-affected countries

US federal health authorities announced Friday evening that they were barring green card holders who had been in countries affected by Ebola from returning to the United States.

Green card holders are people who are not U.S. citizens but have been granted authorization to live and work permanently in the United States.

According to a Federal Register notice published Friday, the U.S. government is enacting a rule that prohibits green card holders who have recently been to Congo, Uganda or South Sudan from re-entering the United States.

It’s unclear why South Sudan was on the list, as the country has so far not confirmed any Ebola cases in this outbreak.

Such a ban will help ensure that Ebola testing, contact tracing, quarantine monitoring, and medical monitoring will be accessible to U.S. citizens, according to the notice.

Federal law provides a delay before such decisions become final, but the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services may argue that the order can take effect immediately in certain circumstances.

The ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.