Residents of a town at the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo attacked and burned part of a health center where people are being treated for the virus, and 18 people suspected of infection left the facility, a local hospital director said Saturday. It was the second such attack in the region in a week.
Unidentified people arrived at the clinic in Mongbwalu on Friday night and set fire to a tent set up for suspected and confirmed Ebola cases by the Doctors Without Borders humanitarian group, Dr. Richard Lokudi, director of the Mongbwalu General Reference Hospital, told The Associated Press.
What are they even trying to achieve?
For transparency, I’m a second hand source, close to multiple people who lived across the region.
Generally, the region is both extremely distrustful of government and outsiders, as well as being extremely prone to superstition and magic thinking. Obviously, there is the spectre of colonialism, but more recently than this, governments in the region are generally corrupt, violent and unstable on a scale westerners would find unbelievable. For example, (if I remeber right) Nigeria recently issued new bills but then much of the money “”“disappeared”“” before reaching banks and other organizations. The president claimed snakes ate the money. More relevant to this, with the inconsistent enforcement of laws, doctors are often unreliable or outright dangerous, such as giving sugar pills instead of medication. I have no idea of the authenticity of this (which is part of the problem), but from my own circle, there were stories of patients of the last ebola outbreak taken for quarentine, and then left unattended to or without food and water. Given all this, its not suprising that they wouldn’t trust outsiders taking people away.
At the same time, there is an abundance of superstition and magical thinking. I’m not sure how much of this is cultural versus reglious versus trauma and oppression versus lack of education, but belief in conspiracies, witchcraft, demons/spirits, and other such stuff is widespread to the point where it make the American south look tame. This is fed into further by the same sorts of social media rumors and misinformation that have become popular globally, but with far more gulibility and far less ability to disprove them (due to lack of education, and lack of local resources).
Taken together, you have basically the perfect cultural environment for this sort of anti-science movement.
They’re mad that the facilities are not releasing the (highly contagious) bodies to the dead person’s family for “proper” burial. The facilities are instead following proper protocol, and burying the bodies safely. Some of them honestly believe that Ebola isn’t real, and is instead a scam by white westerners to steal Black bodies for nefarious purposes.
It’s literally just ignorance and paranoia. They’re attacking the very people who are helping them, because of a conspiracy theory and a lack of education.
I was in Sierra Leone during their outbreak in 2015 (I’m not a healthcare worker, but I was there to feed the healthcare workers), and we faced similar challenges. We had to cancel our mission because we were attacked so many times, and it wasn’t safe to be there.
Also, the same problem existed during the last major ebola epidemic. Rural areas need more education between outbreaks.
So not much different to the US.
My first thought. At least they aren’t having ebola parties over there.
Yet…
That’s just sad. A waste of life.
Most of that area is big on wasting life
I had hoped the pandemic denial would be a western phenomena. Too mass media brain rotted with strong political backing to think clearly. I know even things like the Spanish flu had their deniers back in the day, but I thought ebola would be visually and immediate enough that it would be taken seriously.
I went to a “hot zone” in Africa in the middle of an epidemic because I truly wanted to help in any way that I could. I was making food for doctors, nurses, and patients. I had shots fired at me. The locals tried to kill me. They thought I was harvesting Black bodies to steal their melanin. I legitimately feared for my life, but I didn’t leave until the organization I was working for pulled us out. I would have stayed, but without funding there was nothing I could do.
None of it makes sense. If you read into the conspiracy theory, they think we’re using their melanin to make our dicks bigger. No, I’m not kidding. I never stole any melanin from a corpse (or at all). I was just there to make food for other humans. That’s my passion, I like to feed people.
Thank you for being honest about this. I had friends that did missionary work in Africa. They talked about this, and so many people accused them of being, “racist Christians,” and making it up. The world can only become better educated when the truth is told.
Even the name “Spanish” flu is because of denials from other nations:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu
I don’t think we can convince people to remember it as the more accurate “1918 flu”, so maybe the “not-spanish flu”?
So, symptoms of early stage ebola are fever, chills and tiredness - which happen to be the symptoms of much more common issues like malaria and pneumonia. So for the villagers (who, remember, have hundreds of years of generational trauma from both distant “authorities” and white people), someone gets sick, gets medical treatment but still dies - that’s just stuff that happens (many ebola cases don’t have unexplained bleeding or lesions). But a few days after the death, “authority” people in space suits show up, search the village and start forcibly moving anyone who’s sick into tents or other locations. They intrusively question who has had contact with the sick people, and they may get moved into quarantine as well. In a community where families care for the sick, the families and friends are prevented from seeing their loved ones. And then their loved ones just … disappear. They’re told that they died, but also that they can’t see, handle or bury the body.
This version of ebola has “only” about a 50% death rate, so half the people who get it simply disappear, and the people who are returned are weakened (sometimes severely) from their illness. But the people also have memories and rumors of other ebola strains, strains that killed over 90% of the people who got it.
Someone in the village gets sick and dies. Then the “authorities” show up and start kidnapping people, many of whom are never seen again. You can’t visit them, you can’t help them, you can’t even bury them - they’re just gone, taken by strangers, because that’s what strangers sometimes do. They tell you whatever weird things they’re doing are for your own good, but what they’re saying doesn’t make sense to you - and they’ve said that before and many times it hasn’t been.
Your community comes up with a reason for their actions that makes more sense to you, so that’s what you believe. So you attack the space-suited strangers when they try to kidnap more people, you burn down the building where they’re going to disappear people. Or if you’re in the US, you refuse to take a vaccine because it’s going to allow the government to track you, and if you feel sick you swallow bunches of horse paste and you defy orders not to go to church because it’s your town, your church, and you’ll be damned if you let those bastards in Washington break your community with some fake disease like covid.
Seems plausible but isn’t meaning their asses shouldn’t be whooped.
This is a compelling story; sources?
Seems like people are being held due to infection and others are trying to break them out from the way it’s worded.
It’s actually worse than that. They want the (highly contagious) corpses of ebola victims to be released to the families, so they can have a heckin’ proper (religious) funeral.