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Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo seems to go from one crisis to another. It's faced natural disasters and is in an ongoing war, but now it's facing an outbreak of abola, a deadly virus that strikes fear across the world. It's one that the World Health Organization has already declared an emergency.
I'm deeply concerned about the scale and the speed of the epidemic.
Cases have been.
Reported in urban areas, including Kampala and the city of Goma in the DRC. Business have been reported among health workers, indicating healthcare associated transmission. There is significant population movement in the area now.
The DRC has faced many abola outbreaks over the years, helping it to build expertise in how to manage the virus. But with cases spreading in a conflict zone against a backdrop of shrinking international aid budgets, could this outbreak be a harder one to control? And citizens in Eastern Congo are having to face yet another disaster.
This disease that has appeared in our community is causing great concern. At this point, we do not really know what kind of disease it is every day people are dying in Rumpara, and this has been happening for about a week. In a single day we bury two, three or even more people.
On today's Next Africa Podcast, we're looking at this latest outbreak of a bowl up in the DRC, how cuts to international aid, including USAID, have affected the response, and how serious things are on the ground. Right now, I'm Jennifer Zabasaja, and this is the Next Africa Podcast, bringing you one story each week from the continent, driving the future of global growth with the context only Bloomberg can provide. So joining me today is our senior healthcare reporter that
is Janis q and also Caitlin Brady. She is the Democratic Republic of Congo country director for the NGO, the Danish Refugee Council, and she's currently in Goman near the Rwandan border right now. Janis, maybe we just start with you, because this outbreak is fast moving. Things are changing quite rapidly. Maybe you can give us a lay of the land. What do we know about where things stand at this current moment.
Jen, As you say, things are moving very quickly. At the moment, we are seeing five hundred and forty suspected cases and one hundred and thirty one deaths, but researchers are concerned that the estimate of the true number of infections is probably already larger than eight hundred cases, just as a point of reference. We only had the notification of this come through let on Thursday, so less than
a week ago we had the notification come through. And one of the initial big concerns was that there were healthcare workers that were infected. And the reason that is a big concern is that they're obviously working with a
whole lot of people. And so when you at the point of health care workers being infected, people have come into facilities where the infection has lightly occurred, and then those healthcare workers have worked with other people, and if that had been going on for some time before anyone realized that it was ebola, the options on contact tracing become far more complicated. It's also concerning that they've been travelers.
We've seen that the first dath in Uganda was from someone who'd come over the border from Congo, and when you have infection spreading amongst people traveling, that also raises concerns.
Caitlin, maybe we go to you as well, because this outbreak is really concentrated in the DRC. You're on the ground there, can you give us the sense of what you're seeing, what you've been hearing over the past few days and maybe even weeks.
I'm in Goma, as Janis was saying, we have had travelers come here from Aturi and unfortunately, one of them did fall ill while in Goma and has been hospitalized and the local health workers are doing contract tracing for that individual, so that obviously complicates matters. We also have two positive cases in Boutembo. North Kivu has been the site of several epidemics. This is the seventeenth epidemic and response that the DORC has dealt with, and the most
ferocious response was the tenth in North Kivu. Itturi is
the epicenter of this crisis. It Touri is the province in the far northeast on the border with Uganda and South Sudan, and unfortunately where this started is It's a mining town in a territory that is heavily conflict affected, an area that potentially doesn't have a lo a lot of humanitarian access, that isn't very stable, and potentially where education and exposure to modern medicine is potentially less so for at least two weeks, it would seem there were
some cases, some deaths before the alert was raised, and as Johnas said, when health workers started dying. What we've seen now is a very rapid response by the government and also by the health agencies like MSF and medic for example, who are doing the very best to do the contact tracing and to identify among those contacts who shows preliminary symptoms make sure those people are isolating. Obviously, as we've seen in the past, this is a very
scary thing for the community to face. They don't necessarily understand abola. This is a very closed These are closed communities, and in particular in this area, they haven't dealt with abola before. If this was North Kivu, everybody would be sort of okay, we know how to do this, we know how to do this. But it's not. It's a toury and it's Jugu and its conflict affected. The access is very very poor in this area, or at least
it has been. Just last week, last Thursday, we were celebrating the announcement of a ceasefire by one of the arm groups who voluntarily declared a unilateral ceasefire starting Friday morning. Excellent, excellent news. Unfortunately, at the same time we had the news of the outbreak and we had to shift gears immediately into a public health response.
What has that looked like, Caitlin, Because as you mentioned, this country has seen quite a few outbreaks in the past, but this region, I mean you speak to how this is a bit new for a lot of this community. What does it look like differently than previous outbreaks that you've been on the ground for.
So I've been on the ground to the West Africa bowler crisis in Myberia and also for the twenty eighteen to twenty twenty tenth the Boler response here. Actually, there are a lot of similarities in that initially we heard rumors that people thought this was blackmatic, they thought that family was cursed. We've also already started hearing harmful rumors about the origin of this outbreak, that it was malicious.
For example, Doing risk communications and community engagement and in particular countering some of these rumors is absolutely critical, and we need to educate people about how they can protect themselves. These are some of the most vulnerable people in the world. Utturi hosts almost a million IDPs and Jugu has a lot of IDP camps. So these are camps where internally displaced persons, people who have fled conflict take refuge from violence,
some of which host over one hundred thousand people. These are literally some of the most vulnerable people in the world, and they've faced violence and conflict and displacement and now they could face a bold So it's a terrible situation and we really need to act quickly and along with the nuts and bolts of the response, so the isolation of suspected cases, care of confirmed cases, the contact tracing, along with all of that, we really need to bring
the community along with us. And I know that the WHO has already deployed some anthropologists to support the risk communications and community engagement work that the entire community will be doing to ensure that people do come to health facilities, that they do follow the advice, that they do call the hotline that the Ministry of Health has set up to report, Hey, I'm not feeling well and these are
my symptoms. Could it be a bola? But they need to trust the health care system and they need to trust the responders and they've had a really hard time. This area has been conflict affected since twenty eighteen quite intensively, and then obviously previously during the first and second Congose wars. So it's a vulnerable area and we're very worried about the situation.
Absolutely, Janie, maybe you can come in with some of the facts as well. Caitlin was speaking to what people may or may not think about what is currently going on. A lot of the discussion over the past few days has been about just how different this strain of ebola is than previous ones. Can you just talk about how this bundebugio strain what we need to know about it right now?
Congo is very experienced actually with Eberta art breaks. This is their seventeenth Eberta artbreak, but only two previous artbreaks have been this specific strain that we see now, and already this artbreak has exceeded in terms of case numbers and deaths the previous two outbreaks of that strain. That is a difference. The Zaia strain is formal researched and it already has an approv vaccine in therapeutics, which this
strain does not. So that is a concern because even if tools can be deployed successfully, which as Caitlin's already described as challenging and of itself, whether or not they're actually going to be effective against this particular strain is not yet known, and so that is concerning. The other big concern rarely is just how extensive it may already be. We got reports of the weekend that we were also seeing ebola cases in Kinshasa. Now Conshassa is very far away.
That may be that we've had transmission, but it could also be that there was actually outbursts or hot spots in a lot of different places, and that is even more concerning in many ways because it shows that it's probably been going on undetected for a very long time. And the reason that could be is that the initial
symptoms are quite confusing. They could be symptoms of diseases like malaria or typhoid, and that is deeply concerning the outbreak of twenty fourteen to twenty sixteen, which really devastated West Africa, that inflicted more than twenty eight thousand people. That's a lot of people.
Stick with us. We're going to take a short break and when we come back we'll have more on the international response to this latest outbreak. We'll be right back. Welcome back today on the podcast, we're looking at the evolving situation in the DRC as the who have declared the abola outbreak a public emergency of international concern. I
have jenis Q and Caitlin Brady still with me. Can we talk about the people who are maybe coming in to support and I'm talking about the international community, and in particular, there's been quite a bit of discussion over the past few days about USAID and potentially what impacts that could or couldn't have had on detecting earlier cases. Jennie, I want to start with you and then Caitlin I'll get your opinion as well. Where does that fit into this conversation, Jennie.
It's difficult to pinpoint exactly how much of USAID funds exactly would have improved surveillance, but in very bold breaststrokes, funding internationally and not just from America, actually from many other partners fail for Cliff last year, and that no doubt has an impact because clinics close virologists who were looking at samples and doing trials, etc. A lot of that shuts down when there is no funding. There is
an obvious repercussion to that. Again, how to pinpoint that to this specific outbreak is a little bit difficult, but bi logic of the fact that there is less surveillance generally and less research being done on possible vaccines and other therapeutics makes it difficult to say that it hasn't had an impact. It has had an impact. The response has been swift. As soon as the DRC identified that this was ebola, the WHO, Africa CDC have sent people in.
We have had a lot of other organizations like Doctors with Our Borders, etc. Who have said that they've deployed people. The US has offered funding specifically for this outbreak. The USCDC is also involved at this point. So there has been a response. But in the bigger broad breast strokes, when you've got the US pulling out of the WHO, for example, which is what they did last year, and there are other countries that have been talking about it as well, it really does leave the WHO in a
weakened position and that definitely has ramifications. The WHO said that they've got quite a bit of funding I think about ninety percent for the current year, but that ten percent is going to be incredibly difficult to Marshal. And one of the reasons that they called this global health emergency so early was in an effort to martial resources. That was really what's the main objective of that at that moment in time was.
Yeah, and we heard the Director General talking about that. Caitlyn, can you speak to how it's that the international response and also the receding of some of the aid from the international community has manifested in your work and what you've been seeing.
As honest as saying, we're a lot dinner on the ground than we used to be. And that's not just the wisdowal of USAID funding. It's also frankly reductions of funding coming from European capitals as well as priority shift to security. And while one might be sympathetic with their interests, the result is that there's just a lot less funding
for humanitarian assistance. In terms of our work, yet we've definitely contracted and so DRC would have had large scale programming supporting disc persons funded by USAID, which we no longer have, and normally we would have been working in some of these camps in water and sanitation and hygiene, so would other people, because there's hundreds of thousands of people in these camps and there's a ton of need.
Having said that these camps, the access was bad. We didn't have the funding and so we weren't present on the ground, for example, for the past couple months, and so people are living in really unsanitary conditions, cheek by jowl, with shelters that are collapsing. They don't have latrines. What latrens that may have had are full, and so you will see open defecation and really just horrific sanitary conditions.
The basic advice that we give to people about wash your hands, wash your arms frequently, they just can't do that. They don't have the means to do that. So if a bull of rye in these camps, it's going to be a really horrific situation. Coming back to USAID, the US government and the Department of State has announced the mobilization of funding and that's fantastic and right now myself, my colleagues here at the Danish Refugee Council, and all of my colleagues in the UNIMMY and the NGOs are
looking for resources to respond. It's really critical that we move fast. This is a situation where waiting a week is not acceptable.
Caitlin, maybe i'll give you the final word. As you're on the front line. What is it that you are watching closely outside of the humanitarian aspect of it.
Maybe hard to put my humanitarian self aside, but what we're in addition to the deployment of vaccines, and I presume testing of vaccines against this strain to see if they're at all effective, we're looking at movements of population and the spread. We obviously need to keep our staff safe. That's our first propriority so that they can continue to work,
but we need to move very fast either. Again, some of the most vulnerable people on the planet and they aren't facing a very deadly virus, so they need our help.
Which is why we have to say thank you to you Caitlin and your team, Kaitlin Brady and also jenis Q you as well for the work that you are doing to bring the message of what is happening currently with this outbreak. Kaitlyn Brady and jenis Q, thank you guys THO so much. You can read all of our coverage right now on the Abola outbreak on Bloomberg platforms. Here's some of the other stories we've been following across
the region. This week, South African trade authorities proposed wide ranging increases in tariffs on seal imports in an attempt to provide safeguards as a quote unprecedented emergency batters the nation's industry, and the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa told investors last week that Senegal is in arrears with the lender, according to people familiar with the matter, adding to signs of mounting financial strain on the government.
You can follow these stories across Bloomberg, including the Next African Newsletter. Will put a link to that in the show notes. This program was produced by Adrian Bradley and tiwa Adebayo. Don't forget to follow and review the show wherever you usually get your podcasts. But for now, I'm Jennifer z Abasaja. Thanks as always for listening.