Residents in eastern Congo have attacked and burned part of a health center treating Ebola patients.

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.

  • HereIAm@lemmy.worldEnglish
    81·
    6 hours ago

    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.

    • Watermark710@piefed.socialEnglish
      19·
      6 hours ago

      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.

      • Juan_de_Silentio@lemmy.worldEnglish
        7·
        5 hours ago

        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.

    • Otter@lemmy.caEnglish
      13·
      6 hours ago

      Even the name “Spanish” flu is because of denials from other nations:

      The outbreak did not originate in Spain,[49] but reporting did, due to wartime censorship in belligerent nations. Spain was a neutral country unconcerned with appearances of combat readiness, and without a wartime propaganda machine to prop up morale,[50][51] so its newspapers freely reported epidemic effects, making Spain the apparent locus of the epidemic.[52] The censorship was so effective that Spain’s health officials were unaware its neighboring countries were similarly affected.[53] In an October 1918 “Madrid Letter” to the Journal of the American Medical Association, a Spanish official protested, “we were surprised to learn that the disease was making ravages in other countries, and that people there were calling it the ‘Spanish grip’. And wherefore Spanish? …this epidemic was not born in Spain, and this should be recorded as a historic vindication.”

      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”?