Complicated Fight Against Rar 05/26 07:38

   

   BUNIA, Congo (AP) -- Every time Vanny Birungi, a volunteer with the Red 
Cross in eastern Congo, goes out to raise awareness about the latest Ebola 
outbreak as suspected cases near 1,000, she faces a double threat.

   One is the rare Bundibugyo type of Ebola, with no vaccine or treatment. The 
other is the anger and suspicion of residents who have pelted her with stones 
and verbal abuse in Bunia, a city at the heart of the outbreak.

   "We continue to tell them that the disease is out there. Some accept, and 
others don't," Birungi told The Associated Press on Monday as she and 
colleagues spoke with groups of people in a working-class neighborhood under 
the scorching sun.

   Aid workers are especially at risk in this volatile region where residents, 
like Birungi, have long been under threat of armed groups that have killed 
thousands of people and displaced many more in recent years.

   Trust is hard to find among the traumatized population that is wary of 
outsiders, even those trying desperately to contain the rapidly spreading 
outbreak that experts say was discovered weeks late. Surveillance for such 
diseases has been weakened by U.S. and other aid cuts.

   The World Health Organization says that a family of fruit bats is believed 
to be the natural hosts of the viruses that cause Ebola. But some people don't 
believe the virus exists, or are skeptical about its origins.

   "These people should stop bothering us. They just want to get rich. Let's 
not forget that Ebola is a white man's invention," declared Pierre Basola, a 
56-year-old resident of Bunia, who added: "Stop talking to me anyway."

   Cases are nearing 1,000 but health centers are burned

   Three times in the past week, healthcare facilities have been attacked. On 
Sunday, angry young men stormed a hospital treating Ebola patients, forcing 
medical staff to evacuate them as gunfire rang out.

   On Saturday, a group of residents set fire to a tent for suspected and 
confirmed Ebola cases run by Doctors Without Borders in Mongbwalu, and more 
than a dozen people suspected to have the virus fled. On Thursday, a center in 
Rwampara was burned after relatives were barred from retrieving the body of a 
man suspected to have Ebola.

   Anger is amplified as virus prevention practices keep loved ones from 
handling bodies in final rites following an illness some have described as 
sudden and dramatic, with vomiting and bleeding.

   The Ebola virus is spread through close contact with sick or deceased 
patients' bodily fluids, such as sweat, blood, feces or vomit. Experts say 
healthcare workers and family members caring for patients face the highest risk.

   "Trust is almost as important as the health response, because if you get 
this massive distrust in the communities, they're not going to go to the health 
centers," said Heather Kerr, country director for the International Rescue 
Committee in Congo.

   Armed conflict in the region poses another challenge. To travel from Bunia, 
the capital of Ituri province, to Mongbwalu, aid groups risk potential attacks 
in a region more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from Congo's capital, 
Kinshasa.

   Meanwhile, the outbreak now has more than 900 suspected cases and more than 
220 suspected deaths, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said 
Monday.

   "We are now playing catch-up with a very fast-moving epidemic," he said.

   'We leave everything to God'

   Mado Nditamba, a 70-year-old Bunia resident, said that she has seen students 
running away from aid workers.

   "The last time Ebola came, it was not on the scale that we see today," 
Nditamba said. "But this epidemic today is worse. We go to the doctors in the 
hospitals, but they also die. That's what worries us. We don't know what to do 
and we leave everything to God."

   Congo has had 17 Ebola outbreaks, and WHO says the country is equipped to 
respond. But early tests in this outbreak were conducted for a more common type 
of Ebola, losing valuable time. Experts are still trying to determine when this 
outbreak began.

   There are few places to test for this Bundibugyo type in a region where 
clinics can run on generators, and a major airport serving as a humanitarian 
hub has been in the hands of rebels for more than a year.

   Health workers on the ground have told the AP that they are underprepared 
and underprotected. An unknown number of responders have been infected, and 
some have died.

   A Congolese doctor was reported dead on Sunday in Rwampara, Rubens Dhedgia, 
coordinator of the Ebola response in the region, told the AP. In neighboring 
Uganda, where a far smaller number of cases has begun to spread after Congolese 
traveled there, at least three health workers have been infected.

   And perhaps most worryingly, the International Federation of Red Cross and 
Red Crescent Societies says three volunteers died in Mongbwalu, after it 
believes they handled bodies on March 27 during work unrelated to Ebola.

   If confirmed, that would significantly push back the timeline of the 
outbreak from the first confirmed death in late April in Bunia.

   Some residents still believe Ebola is a myth

   Even as at least one funeral home manager dusted off coffins for sale 
alongside a road in Bunia, experts reported a lack of trust among some 
residents of the region who don't believe the virus exists.

   Action Aid, another of the international humanitarian groups responding, 
said that a high level of skepticism and lack of understanding remains, citing 
residents it questioned in mid-May in Ituri province just after the outbreak 
was announced.

   "The only way to go, as far as this particular virus is concerned, is 
community engagement," said Yakubu Mohammed Saani, country director for Action 
Aid in Congo.

   How that will be improved, and quickly, is still not clear. Meanwhile, both 
WHO and Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention believe the outbreak 
is larger than the cases reported so far.