Battling a Deadly Ebola Outbreak in Eastern Congo

“We’re at one of four Ebola treatment centers in Bunia. A 48-year-old woman who is a mother of five has arrived here feeling unwell. Doctors are asking her questions, assessing her, before they take her back to test her for Ebola.” This woman is one of the first patients at this new treatment center, which was built from the ground up less than 24 hours ago. As they wheel her to the isolation unit, she has a seizure. For a few tense moments, the medics wait for her to stabilize before she can be taken in for testing. Doctors won’t know if she’s positive for several hours. And yet, that’s an improvement from just two weeks ago, when testing was concentrated 1,000 miles away in Kinshasa, delaying crucial diagnoses for days. “Is this the lab?” “This the lab.” We’re the first reporters to witness lab workers here in Bunia test for the rare Ebola species that has fueled the outbreak and killed more than 200 people. “We were very surprised by the speed of this outbreak. We have, I can say, huge backlog of samples. We have very quickly overwhelmed by the work here. So last week we were able to run, like, 36 samples per day. And right now we are able to run 372 samples per day.” “These samples of suspected Ebola cases just arrived at this laboratory. Right now it’s about eight to 12 hours to get a test result, but they’re working to get that down to two hours.” Cutting the time spent transporting the samples is one key to slow the outbreak. At this clinic, the painstaking process of disinfecting the entire facility is underway after two health care workers here died of Ebola. New structures are also being built to isolate and triage suspected Ebola cases and protect other patients. But beyond Ebola, medical staff here are also caring for the victims of a wider war that hasn’t stopped just because a deadly virus is spreading. Inside, we met a wounded Congolese soldier who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal. After years of fighting, he says Ebola has only added to an already dire situation.