{"id":227,"date":"2026-05-29T20:09:34","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T20:09:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alaskamovingnetwork.com\/?p=227"},"modified":"2026-05-29T20:09:34","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T20:09:34","slug":"why-are-people-attacking-ebola-clinics-it-revolves-around-trust-death-and-body-bags","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alaskamovingnetwork.com\/?p=227","title":{"rendered":"Why are people attacking Ebola clinics? It revolves around trust, death and body bags"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

“I was really shocked,” says Dr. Babou Rukengeza.<\/p>\n

\nHe’s talking about the footage he saw on social media of flames and charred bedframes at an Ebola treatment center in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Community members attacked the facility on Thursday, May 21. By the end of the weekend there were two other attacks on a different medical facility treating Ebola patients. Staff and suspected Ebola patients fled in the midst of the chaos.<\/p>\n

Read more This Alaska pilot has been flying kids to school for the last four decades<\/a><\/p>\n

\nRukengeza found himself asking: “What will be our response?” And he had an answer: “We have to build trust.”<\/p>\n

\nRukengeza is the Ebola Response Health Lead for Save the Children in his native Democratic Republic of Congo, where he is based.<\/p>\n

\nIt’s been less than two weeks since the World Health Organization declared the Ebola outbreak a public health emergency of international concern. In that short time, mistrust between communities and health providers has been evident.<\/p>\n

\nWhile Rukengeza was shocked by the attacks, he admits, he is not entirely surprised. This has happened during past Ebola outbreaks \u2014 and the tension is particularly evident around the death and burial of Ebola patients.<\/p>\n

Attacks fueled by panic and rumors<\/b><\/p>\n

\nDr. Micaela Serafini \u2014 president of Doctors Without Borders Switzerland \u2014 has worked on Ebola response efforts since 2007. She remembers vividly when, in 2019, an Ebola treatment center in the DRC that her organization ran was attacked.<\/p>\n

\n“They believed that everyone that came in [to the clinic] was killed,” she says.<\/p>\n

\nSince the death rate of Ebola patients was “extremely high,” people imagined that aid workers were murdering them.<\/p>\n

\nShe says this type of panic, fear and misinformation fuel the tension that emerges in the wake of a growing outbreak.<\/p>\n

\nToday, rumors circulating on social media in the DRC include false claims that Ebola is not real, that humanitarian workers are descending on the area solely for their own profit and that aid groups are withholding the best care available.<\/p>\n

\n“They believe that medicines and vaccines exist, but we don’t want to give them,” says Dr. Jean Kaseya,<\/b> the director general of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who is currently visiting the DRC to help with the Ebola response. Although, he adds, his sense is that it is a minority of the community that believes the false information.<\/p>\n

\nSerafini does not want a repeat of what happened in the past. Now, she’s adamant that taking the time to build trust must be a priority. If aid groups don’t take that time, she says, “then it will backfire.”<\/p>\n

\nThere are a variety of strategies for addressing the breakdown in trust, including embedding in the community over the long-term, hiring local staff and engaging community leaders.<\/p>\n

\nKaseya says some leaders will be given motorbikes so they can more easily travel across the community dispelling rumors and educating them about this virus. There are also efforts to get accurate information out on WhatsApp groups, in churches and on community radio stations, he says.<\/p>\n

\nBut it’s not just learning about the virus. Death is often a flash point for communal anger.<\/p>\n

Read more War in Iran raises Unalaska plane tickets toward $2,200<\/a><\/p>\n

Focus on death and burials<\/b><\/h3>\n

\nAlthough the DRC has roughly 450 tribes and lots of different death customs, Rukengeza says, it is, generally, “very important culturally to take the body and to honor this relative.” The funerals often last multiple days and rituals can involve washing the body and sitting with or sleeping beside the corpse.<\/p>\n

\nDuring an Ebola outbreak, this is risky behavior.<\/p>\n

\nWhen someone dies of Ebola, their body continues to be highly contagious for seven or so<\/u> days, with the virus spreading through bodily fluids.<\/p>\n

\nBurial practices have to be carefully adapted to make sure the virus doesn’t spread further. This doesn’t always happen. The World Health Organization<\/u> estimates that in the West Africa outbreak a decade ago, funeral practices may have contributed to 80% of cases in Sierra Leone and 60% of cases in Guinea.<\/p>\n

\nIn one of the attacks in this outbreak, the community members who stormed the clinic had clear demands: They wanted the body of their loved one back for a traditional burial, even though the medical staff had told them this was too risky.<\/p>\n

\nSafe burial practices often involve having a designated team \u2014 clad in protective medical equipment such as gowns and masks \u2014 burying patients in sealed bags while mourners observe from a distance.<\/p>\n

\nLocal authorities near the epicenter of the outbreak have capped the size of funerals to 50 people in the hopes of limiting the spread of the virus. And as tension has flared, some burials have required armed guards to ensure the gatherings don’t turn violent with frustrated family members trying to access the bod<\/p>\n

Shifting burial practices<\/b><\/h3>\n

\nSerafini says one innovation from earlier outbreaks has improved the experience for families who can’t touch the body: bodybags with windows.<\/p>\n

\nShe recalls how her teams used to put the body of a deceased Ebola patient “inside a black bag, and we were zipping it. The family couldn’t even recognize the body.” But when her team redesigned the bags to “have a transparent area in which the face of that loved one can be seen,” she says, it really helped \u2014 especially when the family knew what to expect.<\/p>\n

\nThat’s one reason why now, at clinics run by Doctors Without Borders, she says, the family of a suspected Ebola patient is incorporated into the communications with the health team the moment the sick person comes in \u2013 including protocols around death. “There’s a briefing to the family on what could happen during that stage, including how we’re going to treat that body the moment that life is not there anymore,” says Serafini.<\/p>\n

\nMax Lieblich, the emergency program manager for Catholic Relief Services in northeastern DRC, says having religious leaders on board with safe burial practices \u2014 and present at a wake or funeral \u2014 can ease some of the tension.<\/p>\n

\nHe says his team is in preliminary conversations to train religious leaders on these protocols. “What we found in the past is that having a local religious leader on that team \u2014 particularly in this context, where people are really religious \u2014 can be really helpful,” he says.<\/p>\n

\nRukengeza says he’s seen that families can change customs once they understand the science. He recalls when families of the deceased “came to the mortuary, and we tried to explain to them how to proceed [and] they agreed.”<\/p>\n

Read more Alaska tribes in limbo as federal energy grants stall<\/a><\/p>\n

\nHe says, “wow, we need to bring those successes to other tribes.”\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In echoes of past outbreaks, community members are attacking clinics, distrusting doctors and following burial traditions that could lead to more cases of Ebola.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":226,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy are people attacking Ebola clinics? 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