Ebola patients fleeing treatment centers in Democratic Republic of the Congo in search of food

Ebola patients are fleeing treatment centers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in search of food, underscoring how hunger has become one of the biggest obstacles to containing the virus, Bloomberg reports.

Outbreak responders are “coming to us, knocking on our door and saying, ‘We need food assistance if we’re going to end Ebola,’” said David Stevenson, who runs the World Food Program’s operations in the DRC and has spent three decades working in humanitarian emergencies. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Since late May, DRC government reports have documented more than 150 such cases of escapes from treatment centers. At least one case is known in which 11 suspected Ebola patients escaped quarantine due to insufficient food. Other reports have linked the escapes of patients to food shortages and poor storage conditions.

Even before the Ebola outbreak began, the eastern part of the DRC was struggling with mass displacement, conflict, and mass starvation. The problem of food shortages in the eastern provinces of the country affects almost 10 million people.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has recognized the situation with the Ebola outbreak in the DRC and Uganda as an emergency and a risk to other countries. The WHO assesses the regional risk of the spread of the virus as high.

Earlier, the DRC minister of health, Samuel Roger Kamba Mulamba, reported that the number of deaths from Ebola in the country had exceeded 230, and the number of confirmed cases of infection was approaching 900.