Ebola is a rare but severe illness that leads to a viral hemorrhagic fever with flu-like symptoms that can progress to organ failure and death. It spreads through direct contact with infected animals or, more commonly during outbreaks, through contact with the bodily fluids of infected people or contaminated objects, not through the air.
Epidemiologists have confirmed more than 260 cases of the virus in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and health authorities are reportedly investigating 1,100 more possible infections. At least 40 people have died.
The epicenter is in Bunia, a DRC city of 2 million people that Ken Isaacs of Samaritan's Purse says is a perfect storm for transmission.
"All of that together — its dense population, poor healthcare system and a migratory people — is really a … good place for the disease to spread and to grow," he reports.
Samaritan's Purse built an Ebola treatment center in 2014, giving hands-on patient care and reducing infection rates by providing hygiene training and prevention education across affected communities. Isaacs says they are stepping those efforts up again.
"We are equipping our partners," he relays. "There are two mission hospitals there, and we're also building an Ebola treatment center in Bunia that will probably be a 50- to 100-bed facility. It's all being arranged right now."
He says this outbreak involves a new strain that is difficult to diagnose.
"The symptoms on presentation at a hospital, it could be malaria, it could be parasites, it could be many different things at the early onset," Isaacs explains.
Two missionary doctors have already been flown to hospitals in Europe, where they are recovering from the disease. Isaacs does not think this is going to become a pandemic like COVID, and he says Samaritan's Purse staff are taking all the precautions necessary to continue the work of serving people.
"It's what we do," he asserts. "We run to the fire when fires happen in the world, and we want to do that in Jesus's name."
