500 patients with mpox flee clinics after looting rebel

More than 500 patients with MPOX have fled from clinics in the East of the Democratic Republic of the Congo during the last month in the middle of the current conflict.

The officials of the centers for the control and prevention of diseases of Africa (Africa CDC), a leading health agency in the continent, have said that they are worried since missing patients are at risk of spreading highly contagious disease that is suspected that killed 900 people in Dr. Congo last year.

Patients fled from rubber and bukavu facilities, two cities that descended to chaos when they were seized by the M23 rebels backed by Rwanda in recent weeks.

“We looted. We lost teams. It was a disaster,” Dr. Samuel Muhindo told the BBC, in charge of a rubber clinic.

Mpox, previously known as Monkeopox, can cause symptoms such as injuries, headaches and fever.

According to the CDC of Africa, since the beginning of this year, almost 2,890 cases of MPOX and 180 deaths have been reported in the country, which has been in the epicenter of several recent outbreaks.

Dr. Muhindo described how 128 patients had fled from the Mugunga rubber health center following the fighting at the end of January.

His health workers had not been able to track them since the paperwork in the clinic was destroyed, he said.

In Bisengimana, a rubber hospital that also treats Mpox, the looters took medications and personal protective equipment.

The fires lit outside the center and when the perpetrators left, the medical records of the patients were scattered on the floor.

The situation has been further complicated by the M23 decision to close a rubber camps, where tens of thousands of people who had sought refuge in recent years.

They were given 72 hours to leave last weekAlthough M23 later said he was an encouraging “volunteer returns.”

“Now we are afraid of an epidemic outbreak in the areas to which the displaced people returned,” said Dr. Muhindo.

His fears have echoed the CDC of Africa.

“Once again, we are really asking for the fire and also the agency to establish a humanitarian corridor to facilitate the continuation of the MPOX interventions,” Dr. Ngashi Ngagon, MPOX incident manager of the CDX of the CDC of Africa, said on Thursday.

During the last week, Africa CDCs say that the number of patients with missing MPOX has increased by 100 as the fight intensifies and the rebels take more territory.

Dr. Ngongo added that a new MPOX variant had also been detected with “high potential for greater transmissibility” in Dr. Congo.

The country’s ability to respond to the disease has been hindered by the conflict, between the M23 and the Army of Dr Congo, as well as the lack of funds.

The installation of MPOX in Mugunga, financed by the UN Children’s Agency (UNICEF) and the United Kingdom Aid Direct, managed to reopen last week.

But it is already so excessive that there are times when four or five patients have to share a bed.

“First I fled from Minova to rubber when the M23 rebels began to advance from there,” Sadiki Bichi Aristide told BBC, a 23 -year -old player in Mugunga along with two of his children, to the BBC.

“I began to get sick in a (camp for displaced people). He started with my fingers, and then I had injuries, which began to break into my hands. My neighbors told me to go to Mugunga with my children. I left my wife behind.”

He said he had seen “so many” people with Mpox before arriving at the clinic last week.

Dr. Oummani Rouafi, a UNICEF rubber health specialist, told the BBC that the only reason the Mugunga Hospital had reopened was because the staff had managed to hide some equipment and medications of the looters.

But this had not been the case in many other treatment centers that had been completely looted, he said.