Authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo are searching for a six-year-old Ebola patient and her mother after armed men stormed Wanamahika Hospital in Butembo and took them away. The child was being treated at the hospital when men described by a doctor as very angry entered with knives and forced the pair out.
The search matters now because the attack hit a treatment site in the middle of an outbreak that has already killed almost 200 people and infected 840, and every patient who disappears makes tracing harder. Dr Lubambo Maboko Gaston said the girl and her mother were urged to go to a health centre because staying away risked worsening their health and infecting their relatives.
The outbreak is being driven by Bundibugyo, a rare form of Ebola for which there is no vaccine yet. The World Health Organisation has said a vaccine could take months to be ready, while Jean Kaseya has warned that the outbreak could become one of the largest ever if it is not stopped very soon.
Health officials are trying to track contacts at the same time as local fear keeps feeding attacks on Ebola facilities. Jean Kaseya said many people who have come into contact with infected patients are still not being traced, and he warned that an outbreak in an urban area with insecurity, mining and trade activity cannot be defeated if those people stay out of reach.
The violence around treatment centres has already repeated itself. Last month, police in Mongbwalu fired shots in the air after angry crowds tried to reclaim the bodies of loved ones who had died at a health facility, and days earlier crowds set fire to isolation tents in Rwampara after being blocked from taking the body of a man thought to have died from Ebola.
The Congolese health ministry says it has stepped up surveillance systems, contact tracing and treatment infrastructure, while the World Health Organisation has set aside $3.9m and Africa CDC has announced a $319m budget. But the immediate question is whether the six-year-old patient and her mother are safe, because the outbreak cannot be contained while patients are being taken from hospitals and contacts are still slipping through the net.
