Chai Brady
The Church response to the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been “amazing” according to a Trócaire worker currently in the country.
The Head of Humanitarian Programmes for Ireland’s Church-charity, Noreen Gumbo flew to the DRC after the World Health Organisation announced last week the disease’s spread was an emergency of international concern.
Since August 2018 there are more than 2,500 cases of Ebola, with 1,700 deaths. Ms Gumbo told The Irish Catholic this shows there’s a “very high level of mortality”.
She said: “The prevention messaging is a really important part, but also then provision of clean water, making sure that the well is in good functioning order and also erecting these water stations along the routes that people are moving.
“This work is complicated. The situation in part of Ituri at the moment is there’s violent conflict, there is militia groups that are having ongoing activity between each other, between communities, between tribal groups. We’ve had cases here in June where villages have been burnt out and therefore people move and of course with movement like that you have the risk of Ebola spreading.”
Ms Gumbo said that when she attended Mass people aren’t shaking hands anymore, they punch fists, “they touch like that because hand-shaking is one of the means of spreading this disease”.
“One of the things the Church has done here is to put out an appeal to people to get the message out,” she said. One parish now works with taxi drivers, encouraging them to speak about Ebola and inhibit its spread.
Prevention
Trócaire operate from Ituri province in the north-east of the country, although there are a a number of cases in the regions. The problem area is further south, which makes most of their work aimed at prevention.
Ms Gumbo said: “The Church is at the forefront of lots of the problems here, for the displacement that I mentioned, the reaction to conflict, they put out an appeal to their own parishioners for cash, for food, for clothes and there’s been lots of local support provided which is then administered through the Church, collected in the various churches and then taken to the affected areas.
“Many times after displacement the church opens up its land to allow people to shelter until they can return to their own villages. There’s an amazing response from the Church really.”