Mutumbi, Democratic Republic of the Congo—For more than 24 hours, a safe and dignified burial of an Ebola case was delayed in Mutumbi, 25 kilometres outside Bunia, in Ituri province, northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. The reason: the family refused the intervention of response teams, believing that the use of body bags did not respect their cultural practice: “it is as if the soul of the deceased were condemned,” they said. In this community funeral rites require lying on the body of the deceased to express love and attachment. A solution had to be quickly found to reconcile response protocols with sociocultural realities.
An improvised community dialogue was urgently convened. At the forefront was Kennedy Muhindo Wema, a specialist in risk communication and community engagement (RCCE), deployed to support the Ebola response through the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN). “We had to restore trust to unblock the situation. We understood that the solution should come from the community itself, not be imposed on them,” he explained.
As a local expert, Wema led negotiations with local teams, young leaders and traditional chiefs. It took nearly an hour of difficult exchanges to reach a compromise, facilitated by community actors fluent in the local language and familiar with local realities. Explanations about the health protocol and the usefulness of body bags, as well as their role in preventing future cases, eventually overcame resistance and allowed the burial to proceed.
Deployed in Ituri for eight weeks, Wema worked in three affected areas, strengthening listening and feedback mechanisms, supporting teams in addressing rumours and resistance within communities and assisting other response areas when dialogue with the population was needed.
“Wema greatly supported coordination in Lita. His expertise helped us better understand the reluctance, better work with community leaders and facilitate interventions in surveillance, decontamination and dignified and safe burials,” said Dr Alain Mangolopa Kakule, epidemiologist and WHO field coordinator in Lita Health Zone, where Mutumbi is located.
Wema, an expert from the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine (BNITM) in Hamburg, Germany, embodies the principle of GOARN: mobilizing the expertise of WHO partner institutions to benefit countries facing health emergencies. “This is my first deployment through GOARN, but not my first experience in Ebola response. This mission was particularly demanding, but it allowed me to put my experience directly to use in the field,” he noted.
Wema, together with health zone officials, WHO, partners and community volunteers and leaders in Lina, helped structure feedback to adapt interventions to concerns, rumours and resistance. He also supported the establishment of two community watch brigades in Lita and Mangala and trained about 30 members, who compile community concerns, report rumours and alerts and facilitate dialogue with teams. Organized at the health zone level, close to communities, the system is now being replicated, notably in Beni, a city in North-Kivu Province.
Recently, the Lonyo brigade in the Lita health zone mobilized to find a patient who had escaped from the Ebola treatment centre before being declared cured. “With our knowledge of the community, we found him and convinced him to return to the centre to continue his care. Which he did,” says Dieudonné Lodza Singo, a brigade member.
Community mobilizer Héritier Matondo also emphasized the role of volunteers in reporting alerts. “The information we receive is transmitted to surveillance teams for verification and investigation. This allows rapid detection of cases, ensures their care and saves lives.”
For Wema, these mechanisms of listening, monitoring and dialogue enable communities to fully participate in the response. “It is about ensuring that responders do not just speak to communities, but rather work with them,” he stressed.
He also contributed to operational research on humanizing the response and to guided visits to Ebola treatment centres by community leaders. These visits help dismantle the myth of the Ebola treatment centre as a “death house.” By discovering the conditions of care and caregivers speaking their language, leaders become witnesses capable of reassuring their communities.
Kennedy’s deployment is part of broader support. Around 10 deployments in the Democratic Republic of the Congo through GOARN have mobilized expertise in epidemiology and disease surveillance, patient care, infection prevention and control, as well as risk communication and community engagement.
Beyond the Democratic Republic of the Congo, GOARN supports neighbouring countries in preparing for the risk of cross-border spread. Coordinated by WHO since 2000, the network brings together nearly 400 institutions. “The strength of GOARN is to transform international solidarity into expertise directly deployable in the field. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, this support strengthens national teams, accelerates the response, and helps mobilize and protect communities where needs are most urgent,” said Dr Anne Ancia, WHO Representative in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
As Kennedy’s deployment comes to an end, the mechanisms he helped establish are operational and strengthen the capacities of teams and communities.
“I am happy and proud to have served as a bridge between the technical requirements of a coordinated international response and the daily realities of Congolese communities affected by the outbreak,” Kennedy said. “The most important thing is to save lives and end this outbreak.”
