Kinshasa (AFP)

The Democratic Republic of Congo offered itself a brief respite on Thursday by proclaiming the end of its 10th Ebola epidemic, which allows it to focus on its other health challenges such as a new outbreak of this hemorrhagic fever, the coronavirus or measles.

"Viruses never stop," said director general of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, congratulating Congolese authorities on their "victory" over the second most serious Ebola crisis. serious history.

Declared on August 1, 2018 in the east of the country, this tenth epidemic on Congolese soil has killed 2,277 people, recalled the Minister of Health Eteni Longongo.

Only the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, in 2013-2016, had claimed more victims (more than 11,000).

The virus has mainly affected North Kivu province, where dozens of armed groups are active.

For the first time, vaccination was used massively on more than 320,000 people.

Congolese health officials and WHO hope the experiment will quickly contain the new outbreak in the West, more than 1,000 km away. He declared himself in May in the province of Equateur, with no epidemiological link to the ending health crisis.

A total of 24 cases (21 confirmed and 3 probable) have been recorded, with 13 associated deaths, according to the WHO.

Congolese professor Jean-Jacques Muyembe, head of the fight against Ebola, observed that the virus was migrating from the provincial capital Mbandaka, to more distant villages that are difficult to access.

"The population is calling for the vaccine itself. The fight will be much easier," hoped Professor Muyembe, one of the discoverers of the Ebola virus in this same province of Ecuador in 1976.

- Militarization and trafficking -

The DRC is also facing the global pandemic of the new coronavirus, with an increase in cases (6,411, including 142 deaths).

The tests went from 50 to 800 a day, said Professor Muyembe, also on the frontline in the fight against the Covid-19.

The prevention measures against Ebola are the same as those against the new coronavirus, noted the WHO and the Congolese health authorities in a virtual press conference.

In the East, anti-Ebola teams have been directly exposed to violence.

A Cameroonian doctor from WHO was shot dead in April 2019 in Butembo, one of the epicenters of the disease and, in total, the UN counts "eleven deaths among medical staff and patients".

Residents reacted violently to the influx of highly paid foreign doctors and aid workers, traveling in 4x4s perceived as insolent outward signs of wealth.

"It is essential to give people the opportunity to take ownership of the response, otherwise we risk being counterproductive," acknowledges United Nations Ebola official Abdou Dieng, among the lessons learned from the crisis that is taking place. complete.

The violence was also fueled by the sums of money poured into the region to fight against Ebola.

"The injection of hundreds of millions of dollars (...) has created fertile ground for conflicts of interest and the competition for profit," says the specialized news agency The New Humanitarian (TNH) in a recent survey on "Ebola business".

To secure the teams, WHO has "militarized" health action by paying large "per diems" to the Congolese security forces (between 300 and 400 dollars per month, in a country where the average annual income per capita is about 500 dollars).

Another traffic related to blackmail in the hiring of the inhabitants for the small trades of the health teams, sometimes by means of retrocommissions on the wages.

At the start of the year, the WHO also warned of "the worst measles epidemic in the world" currently underway in the DRC, with more than 6,000 dead. "Let us remain vigilant: the Ebola virus is still in Ecuador, while the DRC is still fighting against Covid-19, measles and cholera," summed up the NGO Médecins sans frontières (MSF).

© 2020 AFP