FEAR has gripped Ebola-hit areas in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo as the suspected number of deaths continues to rise, as officials say they are struggling to catch up to an outbreak that may have previously been spreading undetected.
“Ebola has tortured us,” says a taxi rider in his late twenties in the gold-mining town of Rwampara.
“I am scared because people are dying very fast… We are really afraid.”
Following a visit to Ituri province, the epicentre of the outbreak, over the weekend, Congolese Health Minister Dr Samuel Roger Kamba acknowledged health teams are playing catch-up with the virus, which may have been circulating earlier than first detected on 24 April.
The presumed patient zero is a nurse who died in the provincial capital Bunia, but was buried in Mongwalu, also a gold-mining town. Most of the suspected cases and deaths have been reported there and in neighbouring Rwampara.
Rwampara resident Fred Kiza told the BBC that “there is fear”, which he calls “normal when there’s a disease like this.”
“It would be good if they gave us masks to protect ourselves.”
As of Tuesday, there were 514 suspected cases, with 136 people believed to have died from the virus, officials said. One person has also died in neighbouring Uganda.
Cases have also been identified in Butembo city and rebel-controlled Goma in North Kivu province, as well as in South Kivu province.
Health officials say that several deaths occurred in the community without being reported to the authorities, meaning they could not be investigated at the time.
According to the health ministry, formal community alerts were only registered from 8 May.
“At community level, this hasn’t been effective,” Dr Kamba explained. “It means someone may have died before him [the presumed index case], or someone else may have been sick before him, but no one reported it.”
He added: “We really need to look within the community to understand what happened – how people became ill and sometimes even died without any report being filed.”
The outbreak has been caused by the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola. DR Congo – which is currently facing its 17th outbreak of Ebola – is more familiar with the Zaïre species.
Bundibugyo has caused only two outbreaks before – in 2007 and 2012 – where it killed around 30% of people infected.
Dr Kamba explained the symptoms: “There is heavy bleeding everywhere, very high fever. But Bundibugyo can show fewer obvious signs, which delays diagnosis because people think, ‘No, this is just malaria.'”
That delay, officials say, may have allowed the virus to spread silently.
In Mongwalu, some deaths were attributed not to illness, but to witchcraft. The belief became known locally as the “coffin phenomenon” – the idea that anyone who touched the coffin of a deceased person would also die.