(7 Mar 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Kabare, Democratic Republic of the Congo – 6 March 2025
1. Nurses and patients under a tent transformed as a consultation room
2. Patrick Buroko, Mpox patient:
3. SOUNDBITE (Swahili) Patrick Buroko, Mpox patient:
++SOUNDBITE PARTIALLY COVERED++
“We suffer because of the war, the medicine is not always available. The wounds don’t heal, and the body doesn’t develop because the medicine comes late. Now I feel good because I got some medicine. The care I’ve received has helped, but the care needs to be improved. When the war started, I was in good health, but then my health problems started with malaria and after malaria I had symptoms (of Mpox) 3 days ago."
4. Front of the tent where patients are suffering from Mpox
5. SOUNDBITE (Swahili) Christine Masumbuko, mother of Mpox child patient:
++SOUNDBITE PARTIALLY COVERED++
“When I arrived (at the health centre) with my daughter, her temperature was 39.5 degrees Celsius and she was given tablets. When the nurses injected the medicine, my daughter fainted. I praise the Lord because she was not like that, her health improved.”
6. SOUNDBITE (French) Dr Serge Cikuro, medical officer in charge of the Miti Murhesa health zone:
++SOUNDBITE PARTIALLY COVERED++
“Patients continue to arrive, so we continue to report, but the health zone, which used to have four treatment centres, now (because of the war) has only two Mpox treatment centres in Lwiro and the referral general hospital in Miti.”
7. Patients waiting
STORYLINE:
Nurses are administering medicine to Mpox patients at a tent in Kabare, Democratic Republic of the Congo, as the area grapples with an outbreak of the disease.
The medical staff are carrying out their work despite the conflict that has been raging in the east of the country since the beginning of the year.
Patrick Buroko has been suffering from Mpox in recent days and says the situation is difficult because “medicines are not always available.”
“Now I feel good because I got some medicine," he said. "The care I’ve received has helped, but the care needs to be improved.”
Mpox primarily spreads through close skin-to-skin contact with infected people or their soiled clothes or bedsheets.
It often causes visible skin lesions
There is no consolidated data on trends in the number of Mpox infections and deaths since the conflict in eastern Congo, but the World Health Organization announced late last year that South Kivu was the worst-affected province in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Following the defeat of the Congolese army in the east of the country by the Rwandan-backed M23 rebels, even the Congolese soldiers who were hospitalized in this health center fled, with the risk of spreading the disease.
Mpox, also known as monkeypox, was first identified by scientists in 1958 when outbreaks of a “pox-like” disease in monkeys occurred.
Until recently, most human cases were seen in people in central and West Africa who had close contact with infected animals.
In 2022, the virus was confirmed to spread via sex for the first time and triggered outbreaks in more than 70 countries across the world that had not previously reported mpox.
DR Congo has borne the brunt of the epidemic.
According to the WHO, as of February 16, the DRC had reported a total of 79,579 suspected cases of Mpox, including 1,549 deaths, in 26 provinces.
A total of 15,847 suspected cases have been reported since January 2025.
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