500 mpox patients flee clinics after rebel looting

More than 500 MPOX patients fled clinics in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo during the past month amid the current conflict.

African officials, Africa CDC CDC, a pioneering health agency on the continent, said that they are concerned that missing patients risk the spread of severe disease suspected in 900 people in Dr. Congo last year.

Patients have fled the facilities in Goma and Bocavo – two cities who went to chaos, as well as the M23 rebels, supported by Rwanda over the past weeks.

“We have been looted. We have lost the equipment. It was a disaster,” Dr. Samuel Mohindo, who is in charge of a clinic in Goma, told the BBC.

MPOX – previously known as MonkeyPox – can cause symptoms such as pests, headache and fever.

According to AFRICA CDC, since the beginning of this year, nearly 2,890 MPOX and 180 deaths were reported in the country, which was at the center of many modern outbreaks.

Dr. Mohindo described how 128 patients from the Mugonga Health Center in Juma escaped in the wake of the fighting at the end of January.

He said that his health workers were unable to follow them as paperwork was destroyed in the clinic.

In bisengimana, a Goma hospital also treats MPOX, players took medicines and personal protection equipment.

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

The situation has been more complicated by the M23 decision to close a network of camps in Goma, where tens of thousands of people have resorted to fighting in recent years.

I was given 72 hours to leave last weekAlthough M23 later said it encouraged “voluntary returns.”

“Now we fear the outbreak of the epidemic in the areas where the displaced have returned,” said Dr. Mohindo.

His fears were repeated by Africa CDC.

“Once again, we are really calling for a ceasefire and also the agency to create a humanitarian corridor to facilitate the continuation of MPOX interventions,” said Dr. Ngashi Ngongo, MPOX accident director in Africa.

Over the past week, CDC says in Africa that the number of MPOX patients has increased by 100 as the fighting escalates and the rebels take more lands.

Dr. Ngongo added that a new variable of MPOX was also discovered with “high potential for high transition” at Dr Congo.

The conflict hindered the country’s ability to respond to the disease, between the M23 army and the army of Dr. Kongo, as well as a lack of financing.

The MUGUNGA facility, funded by the United Nations for Children’s Agency (UNICEF) and UK Aid Direct, managed to reopen last week.

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

“I escaped for the first time from Minova to Guma when the M23 rebels began to advance from there,” Sadiki Besichi Aristide, 23, who was treated in Mugonga with two of his children, told the BBC.

“I started in my patients in a [camp for displaced people]. I started with my fingers, then I had lesions, which started tearing at my hands. My neighbors told me to go to Mugonga with my children. I left my wife behind. “

He said he saw “a lot of people” with MPOX before arriving at the clinic last week.

Dr. Umani Ruwaifi, a UNICEF health specialist, told the BBC that the only reason that was reopened at Mugonga Hospital is that employees managed to hide some equipment and medicine from deception.

He said that this was not in many other treatment centers that were completely looted.