Feature Stories

“These hands are our most important tools of work but can also be a source of disease and death,” the Nyiragongo Health Zone director, Dr Dan Kapuku, tells the Kiziba community members who have gathered to learn better handwashing practices in the era of Ebola and other infectious diseases.

Hypolite Mandala and his wife, Nadège, were among the first parents to arrive for the measles vaccination at Nzombi Health Centre in Masi Manimba, a village 400 km south of Kinshasa.

As Didier Mwesha passed his one-year anniversary on the front lines of the Ebola response in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the numbers were climbing still. As of mid-June 2019, there were some 2071 Ebola virus disease cases in the 12-month period of the tenth outbreak, with 1396 of them having passed away. And Uganda had just confirmed an outbreak at the shared border. 

It was the tenth outbreak for its neighbour, but it was the closest that Ebola virus disease had come to Uganda since 2012. When the first cases were reported in north-eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in August 2018, only 200 km from their shared border, Uganda health authorities braced with concern.

Days before the most important exams of his life – the exams that would determine the course of his future, Claude Mabowa’s older sister tested positive for Ebola

When 33-year-old Kanyere Vwatire first left a health facility, it was the middle of the night and she was running away.

As her bus approached the town of Masi Manimba, Rosette Mboma heard a local radio announcement for free measles vaccinations for children the following day.

The tenth epidemic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) officially began in August 2018. A year later, as of 10 September 2019, 3 091 cases had been confirmed, 2 074 of them had died, while 938 survived. The city of Goma, is highly vulnerable due to the huge population movement between the epidemic areas and Goma, with more than 5 000 travellers a day.

Kasika is one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Goma, the largest city in the North Kivu Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). It was in Kasika that Goma’s first case was detected.

“I put my feet on the ground and wiggled my toes. It felt strange to touch the ground for the first time in weeks. Slowly, I stood up, holding the hand of the nurse. I held my swollen belly and smiled.” That was the moment Rachel Kahuko Kavugho began to let herself believe that she might survive Ebola “and that the baby in my belly might get to live”.