After COVID and Ebola, doctors take on mpox amid conflict in eastern DRC
Al Jazeera
The mpox outbreak puts pressure on a region already struggling with a lack of medicines and an ongoing armed rebellion.
Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo – It’s dawn at the mpox treatment site at Nyiragongo General Referral Hospital, north of the city of Goma, and Congolese medics are already hard at work, calmly and efficiently screening, isolating and caring for patients infected with the disease.
Two days prior, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued its highest alert level for mpox after the African Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) declared the viral disease previously known as monkeypox a continental emergency.
But for doctors in DRC – who have been tackling the latest mpox outbreak since 2022 amid medicine shortages, an ongoing rebellion in the east, and after years toiling on the front lines of Ebola epidemics – the challenges have become routine.
In between the stream of patients visiting the Nyiragongo Hospital for all number of ailments, teams of hygienists and other health providers tend to mpox patients in a separate white tented area where those suffering from the highly infectious disease can be isolated to avoid any risk of contamination.
Among them, shopkeeper Madam Nyota Joyeuse is resting in a small three-bed tent. The 35-year-old mother of two fell ill about a week prior.
