A SIX-MONTH-GIRL girl was buried in Bunia on Friday, another victim of the DRC’s Ebola outbreak. Her tiny coffin offering a stark reminder of the severity of the epidemic, which continues to spread in Ituri province.
Mourners gathered in Bunia on Friday to bury a six-month-old girl who died from Ebola earlier this week, the third child to die of the disease at an orphanage in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
They stood at a distance as the small coffin was lowered into the ground at the Bigo Cemetery in Bunia by Red Cross health workers, while a Catholic priest offered prayers.
According to the priest, the infant had been living at the Saint Nicolas orphanage run by the Sisters of Mary and he added it was thought she was the third child there to die of Ebola since the outbreak began.
The impersonal nature of safe burial practices and the severity of the epidemic were evident as only healthcare workers in protective gear were allowed to handle the coffin and the burial.
The tiny coffin, placed in a grave that had been prepared in advance, served as a reminder of the severity of the epidemic, which continues to spread in Ituri.
The region, at the center of the current outbreak, has reported more than 90 percent of the cases.
The response has been complicated by residents clashing with healthcare professionals over disrupted burials and the response to the outbreak, which has been militarized at times.
Bundibugyo, the type of Ebola in this outbreak, has no approved treatment or vaccine, and health workers have said they don’t have the masks, gloves and other gear to protect themselves.
With 894 confirmed cases and more than 200 deaths so far, the current outbreak is three times worse than a previous outbreak in Uganda in 2000, Africa’s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has said.
However, it is still not nearly as deadly as a 2014 outbreak that killed more than 11,000.
With no approved vaccines or treatments, the Bundibugyo strain was not tested for in the early days and this lack of testing is one of the reasons the outbreak has spread to such an extent.
The more common Zaire virus, for which there is a vaccine, was responsible for most of Congo’s past 16 outbreaks of the disease.
Although the outbreak is concentrated in Ituri, cases have been reported in the North Kivu and South Kivu provinces and in Uganda, where 19 confirmed cases have been reported and two people died.