Authorities in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo are searching for a six-year-old Ebola patient and her mother after armed men stormed the hospital where they were being treated.
The child was taken from Wanamahika Hospital, in the city of Butembo, by “very angry” men with knives, local health official Dr Lubambo Maboko Gaston said in a statement.
It is unclear whether the men were known to the child, but suspicion and fear surrounding Ebola treatment centres have been rife during the current outbreak.
In an interview with the Reuters news agency, Gaston urged the child and her mother to go to a health centre, as they risked “worsening their health” and “infecting their relatives”.
Ebola treatment facilities have come under attack multiple times during the ongoing outbreak, in which almost 200 deaths and 840 cases have been confirmed.
Last month, police in the town of Mongbwalu fired shots in the air after angry crowds attempted to reclaim the bodies of loved ones who had died at a health facility.
Days before, crowds set fire to isolation tents in hospital in Rwampara – a town 85km (53 miles) south-east of Mongbwalu – after they were prevented from taking the body of a man thought to have died from Ebola.
The body of a dead Ebola victim is highly infectious and can lead to the virus spreading further when prepared for burial.
“People are not properly informed or sensitised about what is happening. For a certain segment of the population, especially in remote areas, Ebola is an invention by outsiders – it does not exist,” local politician Luc Malembe told the BBC last month.
“They believe it is the NGOs and hospitals creating this to make money, and this is tragic.”
The surge in cases has been caused by a rare species of Ebola known as Bundibugyo. There is currently no vaccine for this species and the World Health Organisation has said it could take months for a jab to be ready.
The current Ebola outbreak has the potential to be one of the largest ever, the head of Africa’s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Tuesday, echoing a similar projection made earlier this month by the US CDC.
“If we don’t stop the outbreak very soon it will be worse than what we had in West Africa and eastern DRC,” Jean Kaseya told a meeting of African heads of state and donors, referring to an outbreak which killed more than 11,000 in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone roughly a decade ago, as well as a less deadly surge in DR Congo in 2018.
He told the Reuters news agency that many of those who come into contact with infected people were still not being traced – a key way of bringing the outbreak under control.
“We have an outbreak in an urban area where there is insecurity, where there is this mining and trade activity, and also where we are not reaching all the people who must be in the contact list,” he said.
“If we don’t reach these people, we cannot say that we can win with this outbreak.”
The Congolese health ministry says it has stepped up surveillance systems, contact tracing and treatment infrastructure, with dedicated centres in several affected towns.
The WHO has dedicated $3.9m (£2.9m) to tackling the outbreak, while Africa CDC has announced a $319m budget.
Cases are currently concentrated in the provinces of Ituri, South Kivu and North Kivu, where the six-year-old girl was taken from the hospital on Monday.
Ituri remains the main centre of transmission.
The WHO has warned that conflict in eastern DR Congo is making it more difficult to tackle the Ebola outbreak. The M23 rebel group is in control of large parts of both North and South Kivu.
