Ebola treatment center burned as death toll in Congo surpasses 4,000

BUNIA, Congo — Congo’s Ebola outbreak has killed more than 4,000 people, authorities said, as they struggle to contain what has become the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak in history.The latest figures released by the Health Ministry on Thursday showed that 4,018 people have died among 8,300 cases recorded since the outbreak was declared in eastern Congo on May 15.Some health workers, meanwhile, gathered at the epicenter in Ituri Province to demand payment for wages owed them.The protesters, who included surveillance team members, waved placards saying, “No money, no data!” and “No payment for months.”Some of the workers haven’t been paid for August and September, said Biongi Beiza, one of the protesters in Bunia, Ituri’s capital.

“There is no explanation from the administration,” he said.Congolese authorities did not immediately address the issue.Front-line workers have gone on strike several times since the outbreak began, further hampering efforts to contain the disease.A senior U.N.

official said an Ebola-hit displacement camp housing a transit center for infected patients was burned by soldiers earlier this week as they were looking for weapons in Kigonze, on the outskirts of Bunia, forcing 19,000 people in the camp to flee.Creating such transit and treatment centers has been a struggle, requiring money and staff, all of which are in short supply, said Julien Harneis, the U.N.senior Ebola coordinator.

“When we lose a center, that means we lose capacity, we lose investment, and we have to start again.And above all, it means that people do not get access to the care that they really need,” Harneis said.An aid worker with Médecins Sans Frontières, known in English as Doctors Without Borders, was infected with Ebola while working in Congo, the group said in a statement.The worker arrived in the Netherlands late Thursday on a special medical flight and was transferred to a high-level isolation unit, the Leiden University Medical Center sa...