Geneva.- The Ebola epidemic outbreak in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is growing “exponentially” and now covers a territory larger than France, while there is a pressing liquidity problem that prevents paying health and community workers who are on the front lines of the fight against this disease.
“In the last three months, 2,500 people have died, half of them in just the last twenty days,” said the UN humanitarian coordinator for Ebola, Julien Harneis, via teleconference from Bunia, the epicenter of the deadly epidemic that was declared almost one hundred days ago.
Read more: WHO evaluates the progress of the Ebola outbreak in the DRC, the deadliest in the country’s history
Regarding the death toll, he recalled that 160 healthcare workers contracted the virus while treating patients and that 63 of them passed away after having been infected.
From the field, Harneis described a very complex reality plagued by obstacles to an effective fight against Ebola, such as regular attacks on facilities, vehicles, or health workers; the armed conflict in the region, or logistical obstacles, such as the poor state of the road network.
“Last week I was trying to reach a place very affected by Ebola and it took me more than three hours to travel 60 kilometers,” he cited as an example.
Regarding the attacks, there were 260 in the last six months, but more and more of these are directed against those working in the Ebola response, which accounted for half of all those that occurred in July.
Harneis also explained that the banking system in the affected area is practically non-functional, which has caused a serious liquidity problem that makes it impossible to pay health workers.
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“We cannot carry the money to pay them, which is causing a lot of frustration among them,” he commented, after specifying that unlike past Ebola outbreaks, now it is the government that has assumed the payment of salaries, with the exception of community workers, who are also a key piece of the health response and who are paid by NGOs or aid organizations.
The origin of this problem was the order given by the Kinshasa Government, in the first days of the outbreak, to interrupt commercial flights between the capital and Bunia (a three-hour journey), which were the ones that transported cash to local banks.
Mobile transactions are not an alternative in that place due to poor connectivity.
Harneis ruled out the option of international organization employees assigned to work in this context carrying cash, first because of the risk this exposes them to, and because those waiting for their salaries are tens of thousands of health workers and community staff.
Regarding the direction the epidemic might take, he maintained that if the decision is made “to invest now, to allocate more personnel, if more resources are brought to remote areas in the east of the DRC, in months we could slow down the transmission (of the virus) until it stops.”
But he warned that if that is not done, the epidemic will cause many more deaths and will spread, with the risk that this poses to neighboring countries.
