Ebola Misinformation Is Burning Hospitals in DR Congo
Ebola misinformation is not an abstract online nuisance. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, mistrust and conspiracy theories are helping turn frightened communities against the very hospitals and health workers trying to stop a deadly outbreak.
Angry crowd sets Ebola hospital tents on fire in DR Congo
An angry crowd set alight a section of a hospital at the epicentre of the Ebola outbreak in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo after family and friends of a young man thought to have died from the virus were prevented from taking his body away for burial.
“They started throwing projectiles at the hospital. They even set fire to tents that were being used as isolation wards,” local politician Luc Malembe Malembe told the BBC about the scene he witnessed at Rwampara General Hospital.
In the chaos, police fired warning shots to disperse the crowd.
The body of a dead Ebola victim is highly infectious and the authorities need to ensure safe burial to stop the spread of the virus.
Medical workers at the Rwampara hospital, located near the city of Bunia in Ituri province, where almost all of the cases have been reported, were placed under military protection as the police moved in to restore order.
A healthcare worker was injured by stone-throwing protesters before law enforcement agents intervened, a hospital worker told the AFP news agency.
The man who died was a popular figure in the local community and those upset by his death did not “grasp the reality of the disease,” Jean Claude Mukendi, who is co-ordinating the security response to Ebola in Ituri, told the Associated Press.
BBC
Angry residents of a town at the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo attacked and burned a tent that was part of a health center where people are being treated for the virus, the staff there said Saturday. It was the second such attack in the region in a week.
No one was hurt in the attack, according to initial reports but as patients ran out to escape the fire, 18 people with suspected Ebola infections left the facility and are now unaccounted for, a local hospital director said.
The angry residents had arrived at the clinic in the town of Mongbwalu on Friday night and set fire to a tent set up for suspected and confirmed Ebola cases by the Doctors Without Borders humanitarian group, Dr. Richard Lokudi, director of the Mongbwalu hospital, told The Associated Press.
PBS
Ebola misinformation turns fear into fire
There are documented “Ebola is fake” rumours dating back to the previous multiple outbreaks in eastern DRC and have been reported by researchers and journalists.
- Claims that Ebola is a government invention
- Beliefs that health workers are lying for money or minerals
- Statements like “there is no such thing as Ebola” circulating in communities and online
These same conspiracy theories are back with the latest outbreak and that it’s generating friction in the communities it’s hitting.
The West has no right to sneer at this
We are in no position to mock or criticise burning the hospitals that are trying to treat the Ebola outbreak because we’ve seen the exact same kind of anti-vax militancy in Western countries.
We have a level of wealth and capacity beyond the regions where Ebola is emerging and yet we have been awash in anti-vax disinformation.
We will continue to see the rise of emerging infectious diseases, as we cut deeper and deeper into the environment and rising temperatures allow viruses to flourish in places they haven’t previously been able to get to.
As we cut deeper into the environment, intensify human contact with wildlife and destabilise ecosystems, the risk of zoonotic spillover grows. We will face more dangerous outbreaks, and every one of them will arrive with the same companion plague: fear weaponised into misinformation.
“We will continue to see the rise of Alpha viruses as we cut deeper and deeper into the environment and rising temperatures allow viruses to flourish in places they haven’t previously been able to get to.”
True but dont confuse that scenario with a human made, gain of function (illegal in usa), bioweapon development, virus escaping from a laboratory.
This Ebola article is horrific to read and brings back Winston’s lunatic ‘tin-hat’ fringe with their same IGNORANCE about Covid-19. But I guess when you’re a desperate Winston, you will clutch at anything you can whether it makes you look a bigger fool or not! We have too many really stupid people in NZ which is embarrassing to us all. They are so dumb they can’t recognise it for themselves. Bring back mental institutions!
I mean, it’s factually true that the American empire regularly uses ‘healthcare aid’ for malicious purposes. It’s entirely reasonable to distrust such activities.
People believe the facts that they like and ignore anything that disagrees with what they want to believe. I agree that the USA has sectors with bad intentions however they also have some decent loving citizens who are seeking to help others so a better balance between the knowledge that Ebola is highly contagious and the USA has government agencies with nefarious intentions should have produced a better outcome. From the reaction here regarding the antivax issue you can see that our people had the same range of views although the actual behavior was a bit better here.
The attack on parliament showed how out of control the loony brigade had become .