Fear Grips East DR Congo As Displaced Await Mpox Vaccine

Goma, DR Congo: An ever-growing number of patients have been flocking to a Goma hospital in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where a rapidly-spreading epidemic of mpox has erupted in recent months.

Five to 20 people are walking each day into Nyiragongo General Referral Hospital in North Kivu to consult overburdened medical teams at an outdoor isolation centre, fearing they are ill with the virus.

The disease can spread from animals to humans, but also human-to-human through sexual or close physical contact.

Doctor Tresor Basubi inspected the breathing and heartbeat of a calm little girl whose body was covered in skin lesions caused by the disease, which has killed 548 people so far this year.

Cases have now surfaced in all provinces of the DRC, a country of 100 million people.

"This is just the start, the child is not asthenic, she does not show severe symptoms, she can walk on her own," said Basubi as he examined the girl.

In benign cases, which make up the great majority of infections, treatments can help relieve the symptoms -- including paracetamol to reduce fevers and a zinc oxide cream to soothe the lesions.

"Patients get itchy but the scars go away with time," the doctor added.

While mpox cases have emerged previously, a new more deadly and more transmissible strain of the virus -- clade 1b -- causes death in around 3.6 percent of cases, with infants and children being more at risk, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

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