Public mistrust thwarts DRC's response to deadly Ebola outbreak
New study shows a quarter of people surveyed in the hotspots in the eastern part of the country believe the virus is not real
Dakar — A quarter of people surveyed in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Ebola hotspots believed the virus was not real, a study said on Wednesday, as the world’s second-biggest outbreak spreads. Health workers said public mistrust is now the biggest obstacle to stopping the epidemic, which has infected more than 1,000 people in eastern DRC since July 2018, with many refusing vaccines, resisting treatment and concealing symptoms. Harvard University researchers found that trust in public authorities had already fallen in the cities of Beni and Butembo before Ebola hit, due to decades of conflict and poor governance. “It’s been three years now that we saw a declining level of trust in those actors, and the Ebola crisis comes on top of that and accelerates the distrust,” said Patrick Vinck, author of the study published in British medical journal The Lancet. “In some ways, we are now paying the consequences of many years of lack of interest and focus on this issue,” he said . The wor...
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