DR Congo health workers protest unpaid wages as Ebola spread outpaces containment
Dozens of health workers in the Democratic Republic of Congo have protested over a lack of pay as the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned the Ebola outbreak is “spreading faster than our scale-up of the response.”
Workers in Ituri province, the epicentre of the disease, protested at the governor’s office in the city on Thursday, saying they had yet to receive wages since May, when the outbreak was declared.
“With this way of managing things, Ebola will not end in this province,” one of the protesters, Edouige Makosi, told The Associated Press news agency. “We ask the authorities to get involved at all levels so that a solution is found quickly.”
Anicet Baluku, a resident of Bunia, Ituri’s capital, said his two brothers died from the disease as a result of the health workers’ strike.
“We urge the authorities to quickly find a solution to prevent other families from experiencing the same tragedy,” he added.
Protests over unpaid wages and bonuses have lingered for weeks, further raising concerns about access to healthcare in the Central African country’s remote areas already facing conflict.
Government data on Thursday showed confirmed cases stood at 3,973, including 1,801 deaths, and 674 patients—mostly from Ituri—are currently in isolation.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said new cases were “doubling in some hotspots over the past week alone.”
“We all agree that we must urgently and massively scale up all our efforts across all pillars of the response and by all partners,” Mr Ghebreyesus said in an X post after meeting with health and humanitarian partners in Kinshasa, DR Congo, on Wednesday.
The WHO declared the Ebola outbreak in the DRC a “public health emergency of international concern” on May 17.
On Wednesday, the U.S. government announced an additional $242 million donation toward tackling the Ebola outbreak in the DR Congo.
The U.S. Department of State announced the fresh donation in a statement, bringing America’s contribution toward combating the deadly Ebola outbreak in the DRC to more than $500 million.
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