(16 Aug 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
++PLEASE NOTE EDIT CONTAINS FOOTAGE OF PEOPLE INFECTED WITH MPOX++
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo – 16 August 2024
1. Medical staff at the Nyiragongo General Hospital, which has become Medair’s center for mpox treatment
2. Nurse speaking with mpox patients
3. Close of patient Nyota Mukobelwa
4. SOUNDBITE (Swahili) Nyota Mukobelwa, mpox patient:
“At first I felt a headache, fever, muscle pain and pain in my groin. After spots started to appear on me, I thought it must be an infection. My body has completely changed. They came to pick me up, and I arrived here in a MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières, also known as Doctors Without Borders) jeep.”
5. Nurses treating mpox patient
6. SOUNDBITE (French) Trésor Basubi, Nurse at Nyiragongo general hospital:
“By day it depends. From one day to the next, we receive a lot of people. Nine, it can even be 15, 20 cases per day.”
7. Various of children diagnosed with mpox
8. SOUNDBITE (French) Dr. Pierre Olivier Ngadjole, health advisor for MEDAIR DRC:
“75% are children under 10. Only 25% are adults between 15 and 50 years old. This is somewhat of a summary of the situation. It should also be noted that 70% of these cases that come here are cases that come from the IDP (Internally Displaced People) camps."
9. Patients waiting in line
STORYLINE:
Goma has for decades been embroiled in the ongoing deadly conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Now, the city in the east of the African nation, is ground zero in the latest outbreak of mpox, formerly known as monkeypox.
Staff at the Nyiragongo General Hospital on the outskirts of Goma have seen an increase in the number of patients with the disease.
The current variant spreading in the country has worrying characteristics and appears to be more deadly than its predecessors.
Patient Nyota Mukobelwa said she was taken to a hospital in a jeep owned by Doctors Without Borders after she experienced symptoms of the disease.
Sitting on a bed in tents that make up an mpox treatment area, isolated from the rest of the hospital, she described what she felt after contracting mpox.
“At first I felt a headache, fever, muscle pain and pain in my groin. After spots started to appear on me, I thought it must be an infection," she said.
Doctors and nurses said most of the patients showing up are children.
Dr. Pierre Olivier Ngadjole, health advisor for MEDAIR DRC, the organization that runs the mpox treatment site, said that 75% of the mpox patients in the clinic were children under ten years old.
"It should also be noted that 70% of these cases that come here are cases that come from the IDP camps," he added.
Nurse Trésor Basubi was worried as the number of people being admitted is increasing.
Due to conflict in much of the regions surrounding Goma, the city is overwhelmed with internally displaced people who seek shelter in the many refugee camps around the city and its outskirts.
In 2022, there were outbreaks in more than 70 countries across the world that had not previously reported mpox, leading WHO to also declare an emergency that lasted until mid-2023.
It was largely shut down by vaccines and treatments in rich countries, but few doses were made available in Africa, and still haven’t been.
This year, scientists reported a new form of mpox that could be more infectious and may kill up to 10% of infected people in a mining town in eastern Congo, around 270 kilometers south of Goma.
The outbreaks in those four countries — Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda — have been linked to Congo’s.
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