Police and soldiers repelled an attack on an Ebola treatment centre in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) overnight, killing one assailant, a government official said Monday.
The dead man was a member of the Mai-Mai rebel group, Sylvain Kanyamanda, the mayor of Butembo in the North Kivu province, said.
“The security forces prevented the attackers from crossing a 40-metre (130-foot) perimeter” around the centre where Ebola patients were being treated.
North Kivu province is at the centre of a new outbreak of the viral disease which has killed more than 1,100 people since last August out of about 1,600 infected, according to the authorities. Among these, 99 health workers have been infected, and 34 have died.
The Ebola fightback in the region is hampered by the presence of warring armed groups, including the Mai-Mai, and by locals in denial who refuse treatment and ignore prevention advice.
Leila Zerrougui, head of the UN mission to the sprawling central African nation, slammed as “sheer madness” local speculation that “there is no illness, that they want to poison us because they are trying to cash in on us.”
The outbreak is the biggest on Congolese soil since the disease was first recorded in the country, then Zaire, in 1976.
An epidemic in 2014-16 killed 11,300 people in West Africa.
Article sourced from AFP
