Violence worsens the ongoing Ebola outbreak

The Ebola outbreak in the DRC began spreading in early August and the number afflicted has grown steadily, soon to reach 1000 confirmed cases. This has quickly become the second largest Ebola outbreak recorded and the violence ravaging the country is making things worse. In December, political protesters of the DRC government robbed and burned an Ebola-treatment facility. In recent months, protesters have burned and shot at similar facilities. The reason for this is that the protesters believe the government's efforts to stop the Ebola outbreak are intertwined with the government's political interests. Last year, the DRC president blocked people in three cities from voting saying it was to prevent further spread of Ebola. 

These factors are certainly enough to keep health workers hands full, but to top it off, the WHO has released data that suggests the virus is spreading undetected and outside of its normal routes of transmission. According to the WHO, 43% of patients who died of Ebola in the last month were found dead in their communities, not in health care facilities. The current mortality rate of this outbreak is 60%. 

The WHO is playing a difficult game to try and best support the DRC during this outbreak. They estimate that the cost of stopping the current outbreak would be near $150 million USD, and they don't have nearly enough funds to do this. One option is to declare the outbreak a public-health emergency, but as a central African country, there is some concern that such a declaration would shut down the local economy making it difficult to aid in the outbreak. Some experts think that declaring a public health emergency would do little to contribute since in the last major outbreak in 2014, what really triggered international support was news of a few cases traveling into the US. Adia Benton, an anthropologist from Northwestern University in Evanston believes this is the case and the world will remain largely ignorant of the issue "just was the world has largely ignored arson, starvation and violence in the DRC for a quarter-century."

Renata Starbird

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/violence-propels-ebola-outbreak-toward-1-000-cases/