drc

Congo's dilemma: From Ebola to Covid-19 and back
12 HOURS AGO
Ebola was on the brink of being declared over, but new cases have propped up alongside the emergence of the coronavirus.
A health worker wearing Ebola protection gear, leaves the dressing room before entering the Biosecure Emergency Care Unit (CUBE) at the ALIMA (The Alliance for International Medical Action) Ebola treatment centre in Beni, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, March 30, 2019. ( Reuters )
Back in March, when Masika became the last Ebola patient to be discharged from hospital in the Democratic Republic of Congo, there was a collective sight of relief in Congo and across the globe. "Thank goodness!" many Congolese and WHO officials exulted — and rightly so.
From August 2018, when the Ebola outbreak was declared, to February 2020, the World Health Organization says around 2,264 Congolese have died from Ebola. That is over 65 percent of the 3,456 people who have so far been infected — the world's second-largest and deadliest Ebola outbreak on record, behind the 2014 West Africa Ebola Epidemic.
Behind each number is a person and a family that will never be the same again.
Today, after two full incubation periods – that's 42 days after Masika was discharged – that collective sigh of relief has turned sour. It is even worrying.
Just as WHO's director-general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who had declared Ebola in Congo "a public health emergency of international concern" in 2019, was preparing to declare Congo Ebola-free officially, a flare-up of new Ebola cases have emerged; ending hopes that this outbreak might be over as locals brace themselves for coronavirus.
The question many people inside and outside of Congo are asking is, what does this mean? The short answer is it means all chains of transmissions have not yet been stopped - and this is quite troubling. Not least because, as tragic, deadly and difficult Ebola is, containing and defeating it is a fight Congo should know how to win by now.
We have the experience, the expertise, the treatment facilities, the mobile laboratories, local technicians and perhaps above all: the Ebola vaccine.
I think if Congolese authorities cannot contain Ebola, which is much deadlier than Covid-19 but far less contagious, than containing the super contagious Covid-19 could be a nightmare. The respiratory virus has already left a trail of infections, sickness, deaths as well as social, trade and travel disruption in Europe and across the globe and scientists believe it is silently gaining momentum and spreading in Congo.
Unlike many countries, Congo has a long, world-beating experience in defeating outbreaks. Since 1976, the year of Mao Zedong's death in China where Covid-19 originated, Congo has contained and defeated ten bouts of Ebola.
In other words, there should be effective social and health control protocols in place. These include things like the tracking of all potential transmissions, safe burial practices and quarantine of hotspots to name but a few. This has been carried over from over 40 years of dealing with Ebola to contain, detect and break every Ebola transmission chain. This is what makes this recent flare-up troubling.
And crucially, what makes it this worrying to me, is because every single day for the past 40 days since Masika was discharged from hospital, thousands of alerts –– people presenting Ebola symptoms or deaths in Ebola hotspots –– have been investigated.
Yet, this flare-up was not picked up until one of the patients, a 26-year-old man from Beni, a north-eastern town at the heart of the outbreak, died at the hospital. Worse still, the longer this flare-up continues, the higher the chances are that people could die and the more likely this outbreak could spread further and faster.
Congo registered its first Covid-19 case on March 10. A month on, there are now 215 Covid-19 cases, which on the surface appears quite neglectful.
"What are 250 cases in a country of 80 million souls?" is the question many Congolese – online and offline – have asked me; ignoring that some of these 80 million are disproportionately affected by underlying health issues like malaria, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases.
Compounding this issue is the high mobility of the Congolese people due to the high level of poverty, famine, wars, insecurity and lack of basic state support which is straining control measures. Combine this with systemic insecurity which hinders the ability of front-line health workers to their job, and you have a recipe for disaster.
Since the outbreak in August 2018, there have been 420 attacks on health facilities responding to Ebola, leading to 11 deaths and 86 injuries among health care workers and patients. Now add to this the fact that Congo –– with its weak healthcare systems which have allowed Ebola to spread like wildfire –– is now fighting both Ebola and Covid-19.
Already, two Covid-19 cases have been reported in the Ebola outbreak zone of Beni.
While the possibility of a fresh, further or faster Ebola outbreak remains slim –– thanks, primarily, to the use of an experimental vaccine, known as rVSV-ZEBOV –– when you study and contrast Covid-19 data from Congo with those from other countries overwhelmed by it you will quickly realise that our infection trajectory over the first 30 days is disturbingly similar to that of Australia and the United States where cases now stand at over 6,000 and 500,000 respectively.
And this is what keeps me up at night. Without a Covid-19 vaccine, we could face rapid community transmission and consequent sickness, immense suffering and an exponential fatality rate.
Congo governor condemns rising insecurity at mines in gold province
(Reuters) - Illegal mining and trading are fuelling worsening violence on mine sites, the governor of Democratic Republic of Congo's gold-rich Ituri province said, after armed robbers killed four people, including three Chinese nationals, at a gold mine.
The attack occurred around 0100 on the morning of April 5 at a gold site mined by the COMIDI cooperative in Irumu, 62km (39 miles) from the provincial capital Bunia, the governor said.
It was first reported by China's official Xinhua news agency on Monday.
"We can only condemn in the strongest terms these awful acts which add to the list of thousands of victims of armed bandits in our province," Governor Jean Bamanisa Saidi said, in a letter seen by Reuters dated April 8.
President Felix Tshisekedi is trying to restore stability to Congo's eastern borderlands, a tinderbox of conflict among armed groups over ethnicity, natural resources and political power.
Gold is mined by artisanal mining cooperatives, typically using rudimentary tools and techniques, in Ituri, which borders Uganda and South Sudan.
Governor Bamanisa Saidi said most cooperatives and mining companies in the province do not report production figures, and minerals are illegally marketed, causing "massive fraud" of huge quantities of minerals.
Measures to curb the coronavirus worldwide have disrupted the supply chains artisanal gold miners depend on and dried up funding, causing local gold prices to slump to discounts of as much as 40% to the world price.
In one area of Ituri, 79 out of 85 gold trading houses have shut down because they have no one to sell to, research by Canadian natural resources NGO IMPACT found.
This presents an opportunity for illicit gold buyers capable of buying low and selling high, and is likely to fuel insecurity in DRC, IMPACT said.
"Various armed groups and political elites will begin competing for preferential access to these outside buyers but also for control of new territory (and mine sites)," IMPACT executive director Joanne Lebert and consultant Alan Martin wrote in a report on Friday.
(Reporting by Helen Reid, Additional Reporting by Hereward Holland, Editing by William Maclean)
Panic, confusion in DRC amid fears of virus explosion in Kinshasa
Issued on:02/04/2020 - 18:46Modified:02/04/2020 - 18:44

A health worker prepares equipment for a COVID-19 test in Goma in northeastern DRCALEXIS HUGUET AFP/File
Lack of resources, a muddle over confinement and incipient panic are hobbling the response to coronavirus in DR Congo, fuelling fears especially for Kinshasa, one of Africa's largest and most chaotic cities.
Almost all of the infections in the vast central African nation have occurred in the capital, along with a handful in the east -- a deeply-troubled region hit by Ebola and militia attacks.
"The coming week will be the most difficult for Kinshasa. The numbers will quickly double or triple," Jean-Jacques Muyembe, who is leading DRC's fight against the pandemic, warned in an interview with Jeune Afrique magazine.
According to official figures released late Wednesday, there have been 123 confirmed cases, 11 of them deaths, in a nation of some 80 million people.
Kinshasa, which has been isolated from the rest of the country, has 118 cases but this is likely to be just the tip of the iceberg giving the paucity of testing.
"On average, 50 tests are carried out each day at the National Institute of Biomedical Research (INRB)," said a health official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Five cases have been recorded in six days in the Democratic Republic of Congo's volatile east, destabilised by 25 years of rebel and militant attacks.
Two of them emerged in Goma, the capital of the eastern North Kivu province, which is officially due to declare an end to the Ebola outbreak on April 12 if no more cases of haemorrhagic fever emerge.
- Fears of looting -
Kinshasa, home to at least 10 million people, was meant to go into lockdown on Saturday for four days under an announcement made unilaterally by the region's governor.
But officials delayed the measure after the announcement triggered fears of a rise in the prices of basic goods and the risk of unrest.
The national intelligence agency "warned the presidency of the threat of looting," an informed source said.
The city witnessed pillaging, led by security forces, in 1991 and 1993.
A day after the lockdown U-turn, President Felix Tshisekedi held an emergency meeting but there have been no announcements since.
"They want to decide on something that works. They can't afford to make mistakes," an observer said.
Two globally-renowned names have been enlisted in the campaign against coronavirus: Dr. Muyembe, who helped discover the Ebola virus in 1976, is national coordinator, while the 2018 Nobel Peace laureate, gynaecologist Denis Mukwege, is overseeing the response in the east.
- 'General panic' -
Despite these reassuring appointments, preparations to deal with large numbers of coronavirus cases in Kinshasa are a mess, according to experts.
"The medical facilities are unequipped to take in sick people, apart from a hospital run by the Chinese," a health expert said.
There are only 65 ventilators in all of Kinshasa's hospitals, a researcher said. The INRB has no vehicles or fuel and foreign NGOs are pitching in to help, other sources said.
The problems have been experienced first-hand by some of Tshisekedi's entourage.
The president's special adviser, Vidiye Tshimanga, tested positive on March 23, after spending two days at home during which medical teams failed to arrive.
Tshimanga, who was diagnosed with a mild forum of coronavirus and is on the mend, told AFP that when he went for a lung scan on Monday, he was met by a hospital official "who refused to let me get out of the ambulance."
One of his friends and a close aide of the president has meanwhile died, he told AFP.
"The medical teams were ill-informed and fearful of COVID-19 and hardly took care of him," Tshimanga said of his deceased colleague.
"I have heard of other cases like this," he said. "A kind of general panic has set in. COVID-19 patients are being left to one side without receiving care. There is a lack of information... something that we (the government) are going to have to tackle as soon as possible."
2020 AFP

MON APR 6, 2020 / 4:55 AM EDT
Congo mine attack kills three Chinese nationals: Xinhua
(Reuters) - A gun attack in a mining area in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has killed three Chinese nationals, China's official Xinhua news agency reported on Monday, citing the Chinese embassy in the mineral-rich central African country.
The attack took place on Saturday in the northeastern province of Ituri, which borders Uganda and South Sudan, Xinhua said, without naming the mine in question or the company operating it. "Three Chinese citizens were unfortunately killed," it added.
The DRC is the world's biggest producer of mined cobalt - a key ingredient in batteries for electric vehicles - and one of Africa's biggest copper producers, although its key copper-cobalt producing region is in the southwest, far from the site of the attack.
The country has attracted billions of dollars in investment from Chinese miners in recent years despite security risks. Canadian gold miner Banro, which owns mines in Maniema, a DRC province south of Ituri, suspended operations last year after several of its mines were overrun by armed rebels.
The Chinese embassy has asked the Congolese government to "take effective measures to protect the lives and property of Chinese citizens" in the DRC, as well as to expedite an investigation into the killings, Xinhua said, noting that the embassy had repeatedly advised Chinese citizens against travel to Ituri due to the presence of armed groups.
The embassy did not immediately respond to an e-mailed request for comment on Monday, a public holiday in China.
(Reporting by Tom Daly; additional reporting by Helen Reid in Johannesburg; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

Diplomacy
Three Chinese nationals killed in Democratic Republic of Congo mine attack
Official news agency Xinhua says the three died in Saturday’s attack in the province of Ituri
Central African country is major source of cobalt and copper but armed rebels pose a persistent risk
Topic |China-Africa relations

Reuters
Published:5:28pm, 6 Apr, 2020
Updated:5:29pm, 6 Apr, 2020
A gun attack in a mining area in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has killed three Chinese nationals, the official news agency Xinhua reported on Monday.
The attack took place on Saturday in the northeastern province of Ituri, which borders Uganda and South Sudan, Xinhua said, citing the Chinese embassy.
It did not name the mine in question or the company operating it.
The DRC is the world’s biggest producer of mined cobalt – a key ingredient in batteries for electric vehicles – and one of Africa’s biggest copper producers, although its key copper-cobalt producing region is in the southwest, far from the site of the attack.
The country has attracted billions of dollars in investment from Chinese miners in recent years despite security risks.
Congo sends in troops to guard Chinese-owned copper mine amid fears of human rights abuses
Canadian gold miner Banro, which owns mines in Maniema, a DRC province south of Ituri, suspended operations last year after several of its mines were overrun by armed rebels.
The Chinese embassy has asked the Congolese government to “take effective measures to protect the lives and property of Chinese citizens” in the DRC, as well as to expedite an investigation into the killings, Xinhua said, noting that the embassy had repeatedly advised Chinese citizens against travel to Ituri due to the presence of armed groups.
The embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday, a public holiday in China.
