Congo Limits Funerals During Ebola Outbreak

Authorities in northeastern Congo banned funeral wakes and gatherings of more 50 people on Friday in an effort to curb a rapidly spreading Ebola outbreak in a region where medical workers have struggled with a lack of resources and pushback from angry residents. The World Health Organization said that the outbreak poses a "very high" risk for Congo but that the risk of the disease spreading globally remains low. Supplies were being rushed to Ituri in the northeastern corner of the country, where nearly a million people have been displaced by armed conflicts over mineral resources, the AP reports. Ramping up contact tracing is a priority, Foreign Minister Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner said.

In the provincial capital of Bunia, AP reporters saw empty emergency treatment centers, and doctors in the nearby town of Bambu, using expired medical masks while tending to suspected Ebola patients. Kayikwamba Wagner said having the illness in rebel-held areas was alarming because "M23 is, despite whatever ambitions they may have, thoroughly ill equipped" to fight the disease. She said the Congo government and rebels were not communicating on the outbreak. Authorities also required journalists to obtain a permit to report on the outbreak, impeding their work.

The provincial government said funerals must be conducted in strict compliance with health protocols. In the mining town of Mongbwalu where the outbreak is believed to have originated, Lokana Moro Faustin lost his 16-year-old daughter to the disease and bemoaned the fact that he was not able to give her a proper goodbye because of Ebola restrictions. The teenager died on May 15, and her body was taken from the hospital by specialized teams directly to the cemetery for a secure burial. Faustin was not able to say goodbye because he was in self-isolation, and he said it pained him to have his daughter buried by people who were not family.