The answer can be found in the fertile silence of the communities, where the virus has circulated under the cloak of myth and the lack of reliable information. In Ituri, the epicenter of the virus, the disease was initially perceived as a mystical curse, according to the DRC’s Minister of Health.
On thursday, a hospital was attacked in Ituri—why? In the town of Rwampara, one of the epicenters of the outbreak in Ituri, clashes broke out after the family of a suspected Ebola victim disputed that the disease had killed him and demanded the return of his body. Protesters gathered in front of the hospital and set fire to tents run by the humanitarian medical organization ALIMA, prompting police to fire warning shots and launch tear gas, witnesses said.
It was only after seeing the videos showing this hospital on fire that I realized the reality: myths and misinformation accelerate the spread of the disease in no more than two or three steps.
«The challenge is also to ensure that people stop thinking this is a mysterious disease »
This quote from the congolese minister of Health during two press conferences in Kinshasa – Kinshasa, the capital of the DRC in less than a week is striking; and helps shed light on the rapid spread of Ebola in Ituri in the East of country.
A conversation on Wednesday, May 20, with a mining operator based in Bunia—a long-time acquaintance—left me perplexed, confused, and shocked. After all, this is the 17th outbreak; it’s nothing new. How can anyone doubt it so strongly? He claimed that there had been rumors in April that « a ghostly coffin was coming to knock on people’s doors. And when it knocks on your door, you’ll get a slight fever with flu-like symptoms; then you die ».
It’s impossible to believe, right? And yet these wild rumors have fueled the community’s silence in the face of hundreds of deaths.
An extrait from the article titled “Institutional Trust and Disinformation in the Response to the 2018–2019 Ebola Outbreak in North Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo: a population-based survey”, published in 2019 on the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative website, caught my attention because of a point that shows that the issue of trust and misinformation is quite complex when it comes to preventive behaviors during the Ebola outbreak.
Another source from civil society recounted, «In the mining areas, the virus has become the instrument of an occult sacrifice: an administrator is said to have injected the disease to trade the blood of his own people for the wealth of the subsoil. »
The congolese minister of Health reported during a press briefing that there was a death around April 24 in Bunia: a body handled without proper precautions. « We had a patient who died in Bunia on April 24 from an unidentified illness; the body was brought to a health center, and it was during the funeral ceremony that people began to believe it was a mystical illness. And finally, the first case was reported on May 5, (…)” the Health Minister told the press.
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In the age of social media, these ancestral myths are amplified, fueled by the word of authority in villages that no one dares to contradict. Between a lack of media literacy and rural isolation, scientific truth gives way to tragic tales and misinformation, leaving the field open to a spread that only the restoration of information integrity can truly stem.
In 2014, the Guinean Ministry of Health set up a hotline when it announced the Ebola outbreak in the country, with the main goal of addressing public concerns; upon reviewing the articles, one finds statements such as: “Will eating raw onions once a day for three days protect me from Ebola? “ Is it safe to eat mangoes? Is it true that drinking condensed milk every day can prevent Ebola infection?”
As of May 20, Dr. Muyembe, the virologist and co-discoverer of Ebola in 1976, stated that » we are conducting active research in communities to determine the circumstances of reported deaths within families. All this information is compiled to identify probable deaths linked to this disease ».
Challenges in accessing reliable information
The challenge is no longer merely medical; it is cognitive: we must dispel the aura of mystery that fuels misinformation. As in times of armed conflict, where official statements struggle to be heard to guide the community, some choose not to communicate so as not to expose the flaws of a system that is already widely criticized. When the AFC-M23 rebellion broke out, many people stated that the lack of reliable and impartial information had delayed their evacuation before the rebels’ arrival and hindered humanitarian efforts. This time, it is a matter of public health. Even Congolese professor and virologist Muyembe has pointed out the flaws in a surveillance system incapable of detecting this silent massacre within the community.
Rooted in traditions often subject to subjective interpretations, our societies today see their myths transformed by social media into unquestionable dogmas. This shift occurs at the expense of information integrity, leaving the field open to misinformation that takes root where media literacy and civic education are lacking. In the isolation of rural areas, the word of authority remains supreme: if the leader strays, an entire village, in a surge of blind loyalty, sinks with him into error.
Writing by Ange Adihe Kasongo, journalist and founder of Balobaki Check – she is also co-author of the investigation into sexual abuse during the Ebola response in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), published by the Thomson Reuters Foundation in 2021 and selected for the 2021 Fetisov Journalism Award.
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