Armed men stormed a hospital in Congo on Monday and abducted a 6-year-old Ebola-infected child. The girl was taken by “very angry“ men, along with her mother, a local health worker said. The incident took place in the city of Butembo, Vesti.bg reported, quoted by dariknews.bg.
The child has now been found and is “in good condition”, said Dr. Lubambo Maboko Gaston, quoted by the BBC on Friday. It is not clear whether the men knew the child, but suspicion and fear surrounding Ebola treatment centers have been widespread during the current outbreak, Vesti.bg reports.
On Friday, Gaston reported that the child and mother had turned up at an Ebola treatment center about 18 km from Butembo. “Her condition is currently assessed as stable”, Dr. Gaston said of the child.
Ebola treatment facilities have been attacked repeatedly during the current outbreak, which has confirmed more than 230 deaths and 890 infections. Last month, police in the town of Mongbwalu fired into the air after angry crowds tried to reclaim the bodies of loved ones who had died at a health facility.
Days earlier, crowds set fire to isolation tents at a hospital in Ruampara, a town 85km southeast of Mongbwalu, after they were stopped from collecting the body of a man believed to have died of Ebola.
The body of an Ebola victim is highly contagious and can spread the virus further when it is prepared for burial. Ensuring that burials are carried out safely is a major concern for health officials trying to deal with the outbreak.
“People are not properly informed or sensitized to what is happening. For a certain segment of the population, especially in remote areas, Ebola is an outsider’s invention – it doesn’t exist. "They believe that NGOs and hospitals are making this up to make money, and that's tragic," local politician Luc Malembe told the BBC last month.
On Friday, a World Health Organization (WHO) official said the Ebola outbreak in eastern DR Congo was still "moving extremely fast."
Marie-Roseline Belizaire, head of the WHO's emergency operations for Africa, was quoted by the AFP news agency as saying that "the outbreak is serious" but that she had "seen a response that is getting stronger every day." She also said in a briefing that 75 health workers had contracted Ebola during the outbreak, with 17 of those cases dying.
The outbreak was declared on May 15, despite transmission of the virus having gone undetected for some time. The sharp spike in cases was caused by a rare strain of Ebola known as Bundibugyo. There is currently no vaccine for this strain, and the World Health Organization (WHO) has said it could be months before one is ready.
The current Ebola outbreak has the potential to be one of the largest in history, the head of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said on Tuesday, echoing a similar prediction made earlier this month by the US Centers for Disease Control (US CDC).
Uganda, which shares a border with DR Congo, has reported 19 confirmed cases of the virus, including two deaths. However, it has not reported any new cases since June 5, the WHO said.
In DR Congo, the health ministry said it had strengthened surveillance systems, contact tracing and treatment infrastructure with specialist centres in several affected towns.
The WHO has allocated $3.9m (£2.9m) to tackle the outbreak, while the Africa CDC has announced a budget of $319m.
Cases are currently concentrated in the provinces of Ituri, South Kivu and North Kivu, where the six-year-old girl was discharged from hospital on Monday. Ituri remains the main epicentre of the outbreak, accounting for more than 90% of confirmed infections.
The WHO has warned that conflict in eastern DR Congo is making it difficult to tackle the Ebola outbreak. The M23 rebel group controls large parts of both North and South Kivu.