{"id":467924,"date":"2026-05-26T14:49:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T14:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/467924\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T14:49:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T14:49:13","slug":"plight-of-ebola-engulfed-region-laid-bare-by-lack-of-medical-supplies-and-a-cynical-public-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/467924\/","title":{"rendered":"Plight of Ebola-engulfed region laid bare by lack of medical supplies and a cynical public \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since an Ebola<\/a> outbreak was declared in Bunia, a bustling city in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, global alarms have gone off. Borders have slammed shut, flights have been diverted as far as the United States<\/a> and the Congolese World Cup<\/a> team is in quarantine in Belgium.<\/p>\n

Yet here in Bunia, at the heart of the crisis, the usual signs of an organised response \u2013 large medical tents, medics in sealed white suits and goggles and patients lying in strict isolation \u2013 are not yet in place.<\/p>\n

Instead, the incipient aid effort is only getting set up. Outside Bunia\u2019s main hospital on Saturday, workers hammered nails and pushed up tents a few yards from the main door, in a frantic scramble to erect a handful of isolation wards where patients can be triaged, isolated and treated.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe virus is far ahead of us,\u201d said Ahmed Mahat, a manager with International Medical Corps, which is building two of the isolation wards. \u201cAnd it\u2019s spreading fast.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is playing catch-up. Caught flat-footed by an outbreak that was discovered disastrously late \u2013 perhaps two months after it started \u2013 the system of international response is struggling on to its feet.<\/p>\n

\"AA health worker takes the temperature of a woman at a checkpoint in Bunia, Democratic Republic of the Congo. The outbreak is concentrated in Ituri, the war-torn province of which Bunia is the capital. Photograph: Arlette Bashizi\/The New York Times<\/p>\n

Almost nothing was in place when the first patient was confirmed with the rare Bundibugyo species of the virus May 15th. Shortly after, Macky Mbavugha, a field manager with the International Rescue Committee, contacted the local health office to see if it had stocks of protective equipment. He found empty shelves.<\/p>\n

\u201cZero,\u201d he said. \u201cEveryone was totally unprepared.\u201d<\/p>\n

US president Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s aid cuts exacerbated the crisis, he added. If US funding for the DRC had not been slashed last year, \u201cmaybe the alert would have sounded earlier,\u201d Mbavugha said, echoing a widely held assessment in the aid community.<\/p>\n

And when larger aid groups sought out local organisations to boost the Ebola response, many were gone, having closed after funding dried up last year, he said.<\/p>\n

Not only was the virus a rare species \u2013 with no cure or vaccine, and few tests for it available in the field \u2013 it enjoyed a spectacular head start over the aid workers who were trying to contain it. Only a week ago, the World Health Organisation estimated that 246 people had contracted the virus, mostly in the area around Bunia and a nearby district.<\/p>\n

\"ResidentsResidents of Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, continue to pack bars, markets and public transportation despite growing international concern about the spread of Ebola. Photograph: Justin Makangara\/The New York Times <\/p>\n

By Sunday that figure was more than 900, Congolese authorities said, and 175 others had died, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO) \u2013 an acceleration at such an early stage of an outbreak that experts said was terrifying. Just 10 days since the Ebola outbreak was declared, it is already the third largest on record.<\/p>\n

Even now, just about everything is in short supply. Congolese health workers treating patients or burying the dead lack basic protective equipment. Supplies of hand sanitiser have run out in the pharmacies of Bunia. And, crucially, only a trickle of tests are being processed every day at the city\u2019s government lab.<\/p>\n

Aid officials briefed on the lab say that it processes about 40 tests most days, and one day managed just 20 because officials ran out of fuel for the generator that powers it.<\/p>\n

Most of all, aid workers are short on time. Running so far behind the virus, intervention has become less about vanquishing Ebola than about simply trying to slow its steamroller advance across the region. Although the outbreak is concentrated in Ituri, the war-torn province of which Bunia is the capital, it has also been detected in two other provinces as well as in neighbouring Uganda.<\/p>\n

A US official, speaking anonymously to discuss sensitive assessments, said officials deem it highly likely that the virus has also spread into South Sudan.<\/p>\n

\"HealthHealth workers prepare medicine for patients with Ebola at the Rwampara General Referral Hospital in Ituri Province, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Photograph: Arlette Bashizi\/The New York Times<\/p>\n

Ebola is a highly contagious disease that spreads through bodily fluids. A family of fruit bats is believed to be the natural host of the viruses that cause Ebola. There have been just two other known outbreaks of the Bundibugyo species, which has a fatality rate of about 40 per cent.<\/p>\n

This is Congo\u2019s 17th outbreak of Ebola, more than any other country since the disease was discovered there in 1976. For Bunia, a lush city on the edge of a sprawling rainforest, the outbreak is the latest of many calamities.<\/p>\n

I landed here on Friday aboard a plane of UN peacekeepers, mostly from South Asia. They are part of a long-standing effort to impose peace on an area where ethnic rivalries and rich resources \u2013 gold, timber and coffee \u2013 have brought decades of conflict.<\/p>\n

Rival militias overran Bunia in the early 2000s. The battle for control became so intense by 2003 that France deployed military troops to impose peace.<\/p>\n

Now the government is back in Bunia, but the surrounding countryside is controlled by a plethora of armed groups formed mostly along ethnic lines, although one particularly vicious outfit has pledged allegiance to Islamic State.<\/p>\n

\"AA market official seeks to raise awareness of the Ebola outbreak in Bunia, Democratic Republic of Congo. Photograph: Arlette Bashizi\/The New York Times<\/p>\n

Those ethnic tensions are likely also to shape the response to Ebola. Two isolation wards are planned for the city \u2013 one each for neighbourhoods dominated by Hemas and Lendus, the dominant, rival ethnic groups.<\/p>\n

Years of conflict have also frayed communities where conspiracy theories<\/a> about Ebola hold particularly strong. As aid workers rush to build isolation wards, they are confronting angry mobs who accuse them of being somehow responsible for the virus.<\/p>\n

In recent days, furious crowds burned down one isolation ward in Rwampara, just outside Bunia, and a second one in Mongbwalu, a small mining town to the north of the city that experts say is the likely epicentre of the outbreak.<\/p>\n

Funerals are a particular flash point. In rural areas, people often demand to bury the dead in the traditional custom, which involves much touching of the corpse, even though that is also a perfect way to spread the disease.<\/p>\n

\"ResidentsResidents in a hotel pool in Bunia, the heart of the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, on Saturday. Photograph: Arlette Bashizi\/The New York Times <\/p>\n

In Bunia, many are just coming to terms with the growing epidemic. Some residents appeared to take it lightly \u2013 splashing about in public pools in recent days, or meeting friends at saunas, a popular entertainment.<\/p>\n

But increasingly, worry is taking hold. On Friday night, Joel Mugisa (30), a doctor, traipsed between pharmacies in search of hand sanitiser. Every shop was sold out.<\/p>\n

He said he wasn\u2019t panicking just yet, but he was worried about other people and the widespread penchant for conspiracy theories. \u201cPeople don\u2019t take Ebola seriously,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s the main problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013 This article originally appeared in The New York Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since an Ebola outbreak was declared in Bunia, a bustling city in the northeast of the Democratic Republic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":467925,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[8044,196728,103,61,60,103495],"class_list":["post-467924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-democratic-republic-of-congo","tag-ebola-disease","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-south-sudan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=467924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/467925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}