“So on my first day here, I’m sitting in the car and I hear this song,” Clarissa Ward says from Bunia, the capital of the province that’s the epicenter of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s latest Ebola epidemic.
“Ebola, Ebola,” the CNN journalist sings, recreating the tune she heard on the radio.
“Is this a song about Ebola?” she recalls asking her driver, thrown off by its upbeat sound. The driver explained that the song was a public safety announcement, offering directions for social distancing during the outbreak. The radio, Ward says, is one of the country’s most effective tools for disseminating public health information in a region where about 80% of adults are literate and only 22% have access to the internet.
Those limited communication channels are among the many obstacles the DRC faces as it fights its 17th—and potentially largest—Ebola outbreak. USAID has been devastated, the World Health Organization is underfunded, and unlike its predecessor, the Zaire strain, this new Bundibugyo Ebola virus has no vaccine or treatment. Diagnostic testing is now available, but labs are so overwhelmed that the return of results can be delayed. That means makeshift wards are forced to house patients who may not even have Ebola alongside those who do, potentially infecting more people. The virus is spreading through a region where most people live in poverty, where conflict is ongoing, and where much of the population is transient, traveling across borders for work in industries like mining.
And yet what sounds like an absolute nightmare, Ward says, is actually a much quieter picture of human suffering on the ground.
“I think people have in their mind that it’s going to be out of a zombie movie,” Ward says. “And no, it’s not like that. It’s quieter. People that we saw, they really barely had the strength to say two words, but you can see how much they’re suffering. They’re really in pain and they’re really scared.
“When you’re actually in these tents in the red zone with these people and seeing it up close and hearing their stories, it just gives it a very different, very human perspective.”
