Democratic Republic of Congo News

In her small office at University Clinics of Kinshasa, nurse Agnès Bisilwala has her eyes trained on a row of large gas cylinders. “In the past, three or four days could go by without enough medical oxygen for our COVID-19 patients in intensive care,” she says. “Many of them were unable to maintain their oxygenation and succumbed to the virus.”

Health authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo declared a resurgence of Ebola late last night, following confirmation of one case in the country’s eastern province of North Kivu.

Health authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are investigating a suspected case of Ebola virus disease, in the country’s eastern province of North Kivu. Thecountry’s National Institute of Biomedical Research (INRB) is in the process of testing samples to determine if the patient contracted Ebola.

Tangomo Tansia is a hero. The volunteer health worker delivers precious polio vaccines via canoe to communities in locations far from his home in Kikwit, in southwestern Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Marthe Apuwa Mbila is a single mother of two children living in Lusengo, a remote area of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Yole Monlwa, 22, vividly remembers the day he heard a radio broadcast on the importance of testing for leprosy. “At the time, I could not feel my hand, nor even move my fingers. I had had two ineffective treatments. I went with my parents to the hospital mentioned on the radio, and was told I had leprosy.”

The Democratic Republic of the Congo today declared the end of the Ebola outbreak that erupted less than three months ago in Mbandaka, the capital of Equateur Province in the northwest. It was the third outbreak in the province since 2018 and the country’s 14th overall.

Nineteen-year-old Armande* recalls her disastrous first visit to a health centre. “It was awful,” says the teen from Kongo Central, in western Democratic Republic of the Congo. “I was younger then and looking for information on HIV, and the nurse there made fun of me in front of everyone because of my age.”

Tshikapa, Democratic Republic of the Congo – “He beat me for 30 years. Looking back, I wonder how I survived.”