Dread and denial at heart of deadly DR Congo Ebola outbreak

MONGBWALU, DR CONGO:

Unlike other residents of Mongbwalu, a town at the heart of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo's latest devastating Ebola outbreak, Laureine Sakiya believes that the blood-letting virus exists after seeing some of her neighbours die.

Already suspicious of the Congolese state following decades of neglect and conflict, many in the outbreak's epicentre in the northeastern Ituri province are split between criticism of the government's response and denial of the disease's very existence.

Gold-diggers and hawkers criss-cross mineral-rich and conflict-torn Ituri. Mud-covered motorbikes of travelling Congolese are a regular sight in Mongbwalu, some 100 kilometres (60 miles) from Uganda and just 200 kilometres away from unstable South Sudan.

In the space of several weeks, the outbreak has spread to several provinces nearby and on to Ugandan soil, with the World Health Organization declaring the epidemic an international emergency. Of the 322 people suspected to have contracted Ebola in Mongbwalu -- where many of the outbreak's first cases were recorded -- 88 have died, according to the latest toll from the authorities.

"The authorities need to bring us vaccines," Sakiya, 26, told AFP.

But no vaccine or treatment exists for the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola responsible for the vast central African country's 17th outbreak of the disease, believed to have already killed 204 people overall.

In the local hospital, a modest building nestled within the hillside town's trees and high grass, healthcare workers are rinsing the floor and walls with a chlorine solution.

All are clad from head to toe in hazard suits with facemasks and goggles, to guard against a disease spread through close physical contact and bodily fluids. But handwashing is done in plastic buckets -- a sign of the inadequate response to an outbreak many fear could be among the worst in the virus's history.