The struggle to contain Ebola

0:00This week on the NPR Politics Podcast, big news in Texas. one of the most senior Republicans in the U.S. Senate just lost his primary to a challenger backed by President Trump. Now Democrats are more hopeful than ever that they can flip the seat in November. We'll break down the stakes for Texas and the balance of power in Congress on the NPR Politics Podcast. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Today on State of the World, health workers in eastern Congo are battling a deadly Ebola outbreak in one of the country's most conflict-ridden regions.

0:41You're listening to State of the World from NPR, the day's most vital international stories, up close where they're happening. It's Thursday, May 28th. I'm Christine Arismath. A catastrophic collision of disease and conflict. That's how the Director General of the World Health Organization described the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, ahead of his arrival in the country on Thursday. Authorities there are struggling to contain the outbreak. Officials say there are more than a thousand suspected Ebola cases and over 200 suspected deaths, though they caution the real toll is likely higher.

1:20Neighboring Rwanda and Uganda have closed their borders as fears grow over the virus's spread. And U.S. officials are stepping up precautions, too, setting up a facility in Kenya to quarantine Americans who may have been exposed to an Ebola variant. But it's eastern Congo that's bearing the brunt of the outbreak, where aid groups warn that violence, deep mistrust, and a fragile health care system are hampering efforts to contain the virus. The epicenter is a once-thriving gold-mining town in eastern DRC. And as Emmett Livingston reports, health workers there aren't just battling a deadly disease.

2:01They're navigating a landscape where fear, militia violence and misinformation can be just as lethal as Ebola itself. Turn on the radio in Bunia, the capital of Eturi province, and you'll hear warnings about Ebola.

2:19Its cheeriness belies the gravity of the situation. Ebola, Ebola, it goes, and then launches into a series of public health warnings. It's a small part of the huge international effort underway here to try to stop the spread of the disease.

2:37Congo announced an outbreak on May 15th, by which point Ebola had likely been spreading in Eturi for many weeks, if not months. and the bustling city of Bunia, home to nearly a million people, is close to the epicentre, a remote gold mining town called Mongualu. The situation is currently very concerning with active transmission ongoing everywhere around here in Mongualu. Dr Esther Sterk is a tropical disease specialist for Doctors Without Borders in Mongualu. Every day there are many community deaths and suspected patients arriving at the hospital, which probably only is a small proportion of all cases at the moment.

3:16And one of the big challenges is the lack of diagnostics capacity, where often it takes many, many days before the laboratory results come out. Added to that, health responders have been having a tough time with some of the residents. Most people in the town are poor and survive by clawing gold from the earth with crude tools. Many don't believe Ebola exists. Angry young men attacked Mongualu Hospital several times last week, burning down isolation tents or trying to retrieve the dead bodies. Several suspected patients ran away during the chaos. Richard Le Coudy is the hospital director.

3:59Local resistance to the Ebola response has been fierce, he says. Some parts of town have become no-go zones. Tracking contacts is almost impossible. People in the community here are dying every day, he says, but often out of view of health workers. It's a stark illustration of the challenges facing the Ebola response here. Ituri is one of the most complex places in Congo to operate. On a trip there last year, I found families packed into filthy displacement camps after fleeing militia violence. After decades of conflict, the health system here is a broken shell.

4:43Several people involved in the official effort who are not authorized to speak publicly told us the response to the outbreak is proceeding far too slowly. And that isn't helped by the fact that the central government in Kinshasa has restricted flights in and out of Bunia, Ituri's only city. These resources financiers must be available. Ituri's military governor, General Johnny Luboya, has appealed for urgent aid and specialist support before it's too late. While international donors have pledged$500 million to the Ebola response, much of the work on the ground is only just beginning. And for many communities, help is arriving after the dead bodies are already being buried.

5:27For NPR News, I'm Emmett Diddingstone in Kinshasa.

5:41That's the State of the World from NPR. Thanks for listening.

5:58But then the music stopped. On the Planet Money podcast, a lot of countries these days aren't rich, they aren't poor, they're just kind of stuck in the middle. Why is that? Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.