Ebola in the DRC: attack on a health center

Health center near Ebola Treatment Center (ETC) and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) facility attacked at Biakato Mine in eastern Democratic Republic, MSF said Wednesday.

The NGO added that it was removing all its non-Congolese troops from this area where an armed attack killed three Congolese agents of an anti-Ebola team a week ago.

The attackers, « armed with sticks and machetes, entered the Biakato health center, » says MSF. They caused material damage, without making any injuries.

None of them entered the CTE which « is inside the health center ». « During the same night, a group of people, also armed with sticks and machetes, tried to enter an MSF camp at Biakato Mine. » They threw stones without doing any injuries.

« On Wednesday, December 4, due to the deteriorating security situation, MSF made the difficult decision to remove all these non-local staff from the Biakato region. »

In Biakato Mine, a young officer from the Congolese Ministry of Health responsible for vaccination and two drivers were killed in an unclaimed armed attack on the night of 27-28 November.

Individuals « assimilated to Mai Mai »

After the attack, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the evacuation of all its agents.

MSF chose to stay on site, including the CTE, which treats nine suspected cases and two confirmed cases.

The attackers are individuals « assimilated to Mai Mai », Congolese armed groups, according to the administrator of the territory of Mambasa Idris Koma.

Declared 1 August 2018, the tenth epidemic on Congolese soil killed 2,206 people, mainly in the provinces of North Kivu and neighboring Ituri.

Insecurity disrupts vaccination campaigns and the monitoring of suspected cases and their relatives in this southern area of ​​Ituri and the neighboring region of Beni (North Kivu).

Experts fear a resumption of the epidemic at a time when it seemed under control. « We turn around 10 cases per week, compared to the month of July when we arrived at 90 cases per week, » the Congolese official for the response to Ebola, Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe, told AFP on November 22. .