Repenser la Riposte Ebola

Leçons apprises et nouvelles perspectives des ripostes contre les épidémies

Steward Muhindo & Elie Kwiravusa

This is the first of four Suluhu Working Papers analysing the Ebola response in eastern Congo 2018–2020.

You can download the full paper in French here. Below is the paper’s English abstract.

On 1 August 2018, the Ministry of Health of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) declared the country’s

tenth outbreak of the Ebola Virus Disease. Faced with the first occurrence of Ebola in North Kivu province, a

coordination team was set up by Congolese health authorities with support from the World Health Organization and

other partners. On 25 June 2020, the outbreak was officially declared over, although outlier cases occurred through to

February 2021. By its end, the tenth outbreak had killed at least 2,287 people out of the 3,470 recorded cases.

Using ethnographic data, this paper discusses the strategic and operational challenges around the outbreak and the

efforts to contain it and presents seven lessons to be learned. Most critically, it finds that the lack of efficient

communication, the uncritical provision of free healthcare, and a blind eye to the prevailing situation of electoral

tensions and contested local politics, led to poor acceptance of the efforts to curb Ebola among communities in a

precarious security context. In consequence, the collective Congolese and international efforts to fight Ebola,

collectively known as Riposte, were perceived by many as a vast machine of economic extraction framed by an opaque

implementation of clinical trials for both treatment molecules and vaccines, further heightening mistrust.