Are we heading for another Ebola crisis?

9:02Prosper Heri Ngorora:So almost all the cases are in the Eturi region of the DRC, which borders South Sudan, it borders Uganda. The kind of first death was on April the 27th. And there were some local tests done around that time. The tests that were being used, they only pick up the Zaire strain. So the local officials doing those tests thought this isn't Ebola.

9:30Kay Lay:Oh, I see.

9:31Prosper Heri Ngorora:They did send samples to the national lab, which is why a few days later we found out actually no, it is this other strain, the Bundibudio strain.

9:42Kay Lay:Right, so a lot of time it's wasted because they were looking for the wrong strain of Ebola and this is a rarer kind that currently has no vaccine.

9:50Prosper Heri Ngorora:Yeah, so this is a really interesting element of potentially why it took a bit longer than ideal to raise the alarm.

9:59Kay Lay:Could you give us an idea of where this outbreak is occurring? What is the health capacity in those areas where these cases are spreading?

10:10Prosper Heri Ngorora:It's a very remote area. So I've been talking to people and they say, you know, it takes us five days to get from Kinshasa to this area. It's a conflict affected area. So there are rival militias kind of vying for control in the area. The conflict in the area has displaced thousands of people over the last year. It's also an area where there's a lot of mining activity. So you get a lot of people moving around. They come there for work and then maybe they go home. So it's a place where maybe it's quite good conditions for a virus to spread because people might get infected and then they're moving around.

10:56Kay Lay:Right. In terms of this being a place where people are experiencing conflict, they're being displaced. I imagine also that might prevent people seeking treatment or making the journey to a local healthcare facility as well if they're concerned about security.

11:10Prosper Heri Ngorora:Yeah, we've seen actually increasingly over recent years, healthcare facilities becoming targets in conflicts of all kinds. And that can really put people off going to a clinic or a hospital. I was speaking to one doctor and he was saying, even if we did have a vaccine for this strain, you can't be sending vaccinators in where healthcare professionals are being killed. It makes it much harder to deliver that kind of health work.

11:49Kay Lay:Prosper Eri Ngora, you're a journalist based in the eastern DRC in a city called Goma, which is a few hundred kilometres away from where this outbreak is happening. And you've covered many Ebola outbreaks in the region. How is it for you as a journalist to report on this disease? Covering these outbreaks happening in our area isn't easy at all. But for being journalists, we are citizens that are also affected by these outbreaks. So we are also psychologically affected to see our fellow citizens loathing their lives due to these outbreaks. But overall, we are journalists. We are doing our best to cover such events so that the world can be aware of what's happening on the ground.

12:42Kay Lay:And then world leaders can take the decision to save thousands of lives in our region. And Prosper, the outbreak is currently nowhere near the size of the Ebola crisis between 2013 and 2016. But tell me, how worried are people in the DRC? This disease or this outbreak doesn't have any vaccine. That creates panic. They are dealing with the effect of armed conflict. They are dealing, for example, here in Goma with the closure of Goma International Airport. They are dealing with the closure of banks for more than one year. and then Ebola comes. And as we speak, Rwanda has closed its borders with the Democratic Republic of Congo.

13:35Kay Lay:And that really affects thousands of lives because cross-border trade was like a lifeline for many families here in Goma. Some people here in Goma have already taken measures in order to protect themselves. Some people are washing their hands. Even some people are buying masks to put on their noises. People are trying to do their best to make sure that they protect themselves. And above all, they protect the whole community from getting these dangerous diseases, besimating the region, Eastern Congo and Uganda. And obviously contracting Ebola is horrific. The vomiting, the bleeding. But also, what about the way people are treated by others in their community if they do get infected?

14:28Kay Lay:There are stigma associated with Ebola. Some people believe that when you catch Ebola, it is like a curse. And apart from that, when you have Ebola, you are isolated. Human beings are social animals. When you are isolated from people, from your family, from your friends, it can sometimes frustrate you. It can be really hard for you to cope with all those misconceptions, to cope with all those doubts surrounding that disease. And Prosperous, part of your reporting, you've been calling people in the affected area. And what have people been telling you? People are concerned in the whole Democratic Republic of Congo.

15:17Kay Lay:I have spoken with Claude Kasuna. He is a Turi resident. He has said that he is afraid. He fears the disease because many people there have many beliefs that doesn't have any scientific basis. He has stated that when you say about the need of social distancing and wearing masks, people tend to oppose saying that such measures are bothering them. On the question of Ebola, Gloire Mumbessa, who is a resident of Mungualu, an epicenter of the disease, he has shared with me a fact that he knows a family who lost their eight-year-old daughter. And the girl has symptoms, such vomiting, weaknesses throughout her body.

16:18Kay Lay:And he said that doctors are monitoring other families' members to assess their health. He underlined that the population is now starting to realise the danger they are facing. And how prepared is the DRC for an outbreak like the one we're seeing? We are among least developed countries. It means our health infrastructures are very poor. We don't have modern technology that can help us to deal with thatch outbreaks. Apart from that, yes, our country, Democratic Republic of Congo, depends on international aid. We have seen when Donald Trump came into power, he has shut down AIDS. There's no reason for USAID, when you look at the politicians that have been in there sucking the blood out of it, when you look at all of the fake deals, it's fake, it's fraudulent, it's probably kickbacks.

17:19Kay Lay:And those international aid were helping Congolese government to withstand some outbreaks. When there is no aid, that can affect negatively all your efforts aiming at combating or at ending outbreaks that are happening in the region. What are your hopes that this outbreak will actually get under control? So, I'm afraid and I'm optimistic. Yes, it is a danger, but all efforts are being done by international partners and Congolese authorities. I believe that at the end of the time, we will overcome this disease. It will be a painful experience, but nothing doesn't have an end. If it begins, it will end.

18:15Kay Lay:Coming up, the race to find a vaccine.

18:32Kay Lay:Kat, how's the race going to develop a vaccine for this particular strain?

18:37Prosper Heri Ngorora:Certainly Africa CDC say that they are going to need millions more in funding to get on top of this. So there are vaccines at various stages of development. None have entered human trials yet. It will be certainly weeks, probably months before those protocols can kind of be developed and experimental treatments even can be deployed on the ground. Right.

19:05Kay Lay:Okay. So with that in mind, how big could this outbreak potentially get?

19:09Prosper Heri Ngorora:I mean, that is the big question. The DRC has experience dealing with Ebola outbreaks. This is its 17th. And we can do it without vaccines, without therapeutics, through this kind of painstaking process of tracking down cases and who they've been in contact with. It's just a lot harder and it takes a lot longer.

19:33Kay Lay:So I guess after the COVID-19 pandemic, we would all hope that the world is now better prepared for future pandemics. But is that actually the case?

19:43Prosper Heri Ngorora:So there was a fairly damning report out on Monday from the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board. And that was a group that was set up actually in the wake of that big Ebola outbreak in 2016 to look at whether the world was becoming safer from outbreaks of infectious diseases. and it found actually no not meaningfully it's quite scary on some measures things have changed so we have new drugs we have new scientific advances you have changes to the way countries cooperate but at the same time you have things like the u.s withdrawing from that kind of global system, you have, particularly post-COVID, this kind of fragmentation, this huge growth in mistrust, in misinformation.

20:45Prosper Heri Ngorora:And so those are kind of counterbalancing those advances and making it seem as if maybe we're not actually in a better place than we were before COVID or before that big Ebola outbreak.

21:00Kay Lay:So that's a pretty worrying picture that you're painting here. And it's not Not just Ebola, is it? People have been really alarmed by the spread of this rodent-born hantavirus after we saw that cruise ship kind of plagued by the spread of that disease. It seems like that there might be an impression that there seemed to be this kind of spike in disease outbreaks. Is that just a perception or are these virus events actually becoming more common?

21:27Prosper Heri Ngorora:Part of what's happening now is that we're getting better at spotting these outbreaks. But yes, they are becoming more frequent and that's got a number of drivers. You have a changing climate, which is perhaps making better conditions for certain pathogens. You have people encroaching on what was once wild space. And so getting closer to whether it's the bats or the rats that harbor these viruses, you have a much more interconnected world. So people can hop on a plane and be on the other side of the planet in a matter of hours. Whereas once upon a time, the spread of the disease would have been that much slower because the flow of people was that much slower.

22:22Kay Lay:And Kat, even once this current Ebola crisis is hopefully contained, do you think it would have left its mark on those towns and villages that have already been affected?

22:34Prosper Heri Ngorora:I know that survivors of that big outbreak in 2016, they're still living with the after effects a decade on. Ebola can have quite a long tail in terms of effects on eye problems, muscle problems, sometimes neurological problems. If you're living in an area where there's an outbreak, it must feel extremely scary.

23:03Kay Lay:Kat, thank you so much for joining us today.

23:06Prosper Heri Ngorora:Thank you for having me.

23:09Kay Lay:And that's it for today. My thanks again to Kat Leigh and Prosper Eri Ingora, and you can read all of their reporting on the Ebola crisis at theguardian.com. This episode was produced by Saskia Collette and presented by me, Annie Kelly. Sound design was by Ross Burns, and the executive producer was Elizabeth Kasson. And we will be back this afternoon with the latest.

23:35Prosper Heri Ngorora:This is The Guardian.