Weeks before an outbreak of Ebola was declared in the Democratic Republic of Congo, affected communities reportedly thought people were dying due to “witchcraft”.
The World Health Organization declared the Ebola outbreak, the 17th in the large country of more than 100 million people, an international health emergency on Sunday.
Witnesses said, however, that the first suspected cases of the highly contagious haemorrhagic fever appeared in mid-April in the mining locality of Mongbwalu, in gold-rich Ituri province.
"Unfortunately, the alert spread slowly within the community, as people believed they were suffering from a ‘mystical illness’", said Congolese Health Minister Samuel Roger Kamba on Tuesday.
A hospital official in Rwampara – a town in the eastern Ituri province which is the epicentre of the epidemic – says they believed traditional leaders had cast a curse.
