Community resistance a challenge in fighting new Ebola outbreaks in DRC and Guinea
The two outbreaks in Guinea and the DRC are still small, with a total of 30 reported cases, 15 deaths, and 11 recoveries.
CAPE TOWN, March 19 (ANA) – Community resistance to health response efforts is a problem that plagued the previous Ebola crisis and has re-emerged as a top challenge in containing new outbreaks in Guinea and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
Because of this, those who have come into contact with infected people have not all been traced and there is a high risk of regional spread, Merawi Aragaw, incident manager for Ebola in the DRC and Guinea at the Africa CDC, was quoted as saying by Devex, a social enterprise and media platform for the global development community.
The two outbreaks are still small, with a total of 30 reported cases, 15 deaths and 11 recoveries, but anyone who has come into contact with these people should be monitored, Aragaw said during a press briefing on Thursday.
He said health workers have only been able to do so for about 86% of contacts in the DRC and about 96% in Guinea.
Community resistance has interfered with efforts around infection prevention and safe burials, and it has led to a small number of alerts for suspected cases reported by communities.
The Africa CDC, the specialised health-care agency of the 55-member African Union, reported a fatality rate of 50% in the two countries, Chinese news agency Xinhua reported on Wednesday.
The agency said figures showed that the DRC had 12 cases and six deaths, while Guinea had 18 cases and nine deaths.
On February 7, the DRC’s health ministry said a new Ebola fatality had been confirmed in Butembo in North Kivu province. The dead woman was the 42-year-old wife of an Ebola survivor.
Guinea declared an Ebola outbreak in one of its regions on February 14, when seven people fell ill with diarrhoea, vomiting and bleeding after attending a burial in Goueke, near the Liberian border, according to international news broadcaster Al Jazeera.
Community resistance was a major problem in both the Ebola epidemic in West Africa from 2014 to 2016 and a previous outbreak in eastern DRC, according to the Africa CDC. This led to lengthy, complicated responses. Responders in eastern DRC acknowledged that not enough was done in the previous outbreak to gain the trust of communities from the beginning, which contributed to a dangerous situation for health workers, who were repeatedly attacked.
While this is concerning, it’s not unexpected, said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, World Health Organization regional director for Africa.
“We’ve observed — every time in the beginning, in the early stages of these outbreaks, community resistance,” she said, adding that health workers in both Guinea and the DRC are seeking to engage with trusted community leaders to help spread information about the response.
– African News Agency (ANA); Editing by Yaron Blecher
