People set fire to an Ebola treatment center in a town at the heart of the outbreak in eastern Congo on Thursday after being stopped from retrieving the body of a local man, a witness and a senior police officer said, as fear and anger grow over a health crisis that doctors are struggling to contain.
The arson attack in Rwampara reflects the challenges of health workers trying to curb a rare Ebola virus by using stringent measures that might clash with local customs, such as burial rites. The disease has been spreading for weeks in a region lacking in health facilities and where armed conflict has displaced many people.
The dangerous work of burying suspected victims is being managed wherever possible by authorities because the bodies of those who die from Ebola can be highly contagious and lead to further spread when people prepare bodies for burial and gather for funerals.
That policy can be extremely unpopular with victims’ families and friends, who aren’t given the chance to bury their loved ones.
Ebola outbreak brought to you by donald trump, elon musk, and DOGE. Cut out all of USAID and ended up costing Americans more without saving any money and killed/will kill a shit load of people.
The GOP is a pedophile death cult.
ebola virus and the spread by local burial tradition been a thing for a decade now. was the prevention or mediatory unsuccessful?
i have no doubt the science works but looking back at covid and future diseases there is def a human aspect thats clearly still lacking.
It’s not quite as easy as “stop kissing corpses” though. It’s more like “don’t go near your loved ones as they slowly die in terrible pain”, which is very easy to say, but probably a LOT harder to do.
Ebola is endemic in the region (I think bats carry it). As a result, there will be contagion sometimes, specially more so with climate change and destruction of habitats. Until a cure is developed, we need to treat the sick and try to prevent spread. There is no easy solution to this problem, or MERS, or Hantavirus, or…. Well, you get the point.
And this isn’t just a case of more exposure to the source zoonotic exposure vector thanks to climate change or humans encroaching on their habitats, this is a concerning strain that had more cases discovered in the first 48 hours than the worst previous cases of spread have at their max after weeks or months of spread. That makes these containment efforts very necessary and very smart.
I appreciate this being a reply that engages with the human experience folks are having there as much as the need for treatment and containment measures
Obviously its not helpful to burn treatment clinics. And also, very clearly theres a large cultural and human need that needs to be addressed in some way to manage the current crisis.
Kinda just a sad situation all around. Burial traditions and the grieving process are really important, and being denied the ability to participate in them must be deeply painful. I hope that medical and cultural practices can somehow adjust over time and find something more stable long term
Ignorant people do stupid things.
That’s not good, right? The whole burning the buildings thing. That’s bad, right? I’ve seen movies.
People set fire to an Ebola treatment center in a town at the heart of the outbreak in eastern Congo on Thursday after being stopped from retrieving the body of a local man, a witness and a senior police officer said, as fear and anger grow over a health crisis that doctors are struggling to contain.
I heard of a country where they’re trying to burn down the entire government; even as it, too, is their only hope of survival.
I would just pull out and quarantine the area. It may sound heartless, but it’s not worth the lives of others.
How brave of you to suggest the world should once again turns their back on the African people. Ideas like that take true courage and wisdom. You are true a visionary speaking truth “just let 'em die”. They are only Congolese, not like “others” that might have actual intrinsic value.
Very dumb to believe you can just let the virus spread and it won’t reach new regions. And once it spreads to non-African nations, it may find new animal hosts and become endemic in those new continents.
become endemic those to new continents.
that’s the definition of pandemic.
That’s true, but most people associate that word with a mass disease outbreak (basically a synonym for plague), vs a disease that infects a small number of people in multiple places.
…which is why I said we should contain it to the smallest possible area.
My dude, they can’t even protect a clinic. How do you suppose your proposed quarantine be enforced?
If you do that, you force people to sneak out to save their lives, and it will leak out without anyone knowing until it pops up somewhere else.
So instead of an organized system of monitoring, treatment, and quarantine, you’re suggesting the world stick its head in the sand?
This is how I feel about america. Fuck off goof.
There goes the economy, if ebola reaches Trump land.
