Ebola virus in Democratic Republic of Congo is out of control as conflict prevents treatment.

A man recives the Ebola vaccine. The Guardian/Reuters. 

Efforts to stop an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo are being complicated by conflict and rebel groups. The Guardian. 157 people have died in the outbreak of which at least 122 cases confirmed. 244 cases of Ebola have been confirmed. Vaccinations and contact tracing are effective at stopping Ebola but those efforts have been impossible due to attacks by Islamist groups. Aid workers and civilians have been attacked by these Islamists and even killed. International aid groups are saying that if something doesn't change than the outbreak could get much worse. Ebola has already spread to the major city of Beni. 20,000 people have been vaccinated and contact tracing has been done for 11,000 people. The last major outbreak of Ebola in 2014-2016 killed 11,300. 

My Comment:

Very unreported story considering how deadly the last Ebola outbreak was. Our American media is completely out to lunch as they refuse to report on anything that isn't negative news about President Trump. The outbreak is pretty serious though. 

In some ways the medical community is much better at dealing with Ebola than we were during the last outbreak. For one thing we now have an effective vaccine that can prevent the disease from spreading. The vaccine isn't perfect but it is something we didn't have last time. Plus the medical community has a lot more experience and learned some valuable lessons how to treat the disease. This outbreak could have been a lot worse but we have been somewhat successful ins slowing down the virus. 

The problem is that the local Islamists, the ADF has decided to attack the main center of the outbreak, Beni. They have even gone so far as to attack aid workers and they are preventing proper treatment of the disease. This is allowing the disease to spread through the city of Beni. Beni isn't a huge city as it's population is around 200,000 people, but without proper treatment many of those people could fall ill. 

Doing so makes little sense for the ADF. Letting Ebola spread won't help them win their insurgency. It will weaken their government opponents, but not so much that they can defeat the Congolese military. And even the best case scenario where they somehow manage to capture the city, it just means that their own troops will come down with Ebola. 

The good news is that even though the ADF is attacking the Beni area, it is helping stop the spread of the virus. Why? Because people are too scared to travel to the city. If people don't come it's pretty hard to spread the disease. In the short term this should slow the spread of the virus. 

That being said if either crisis comes to ahead people might start to flee Beni and some of them will be infected with the Ebola virus. That means the virus could spiral out of control and become a national and international emergency. I don't think we will see anything on the scale of the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak. Our response to the Ebola virus is much improved and the vaccine should prevent a global outbreak. Still, I would feel better if the ADF would wise up and let the international community do their job.