By Nina Gabrielle Mitch
DR CONGO: Health Minister Eteni Longondo announced Thursday, March 12th evening that the second case of coronavirus had been confirmed in Kinshasa. The patient is a Cameroonian citizen and resides in the DRC with his family. He returned from France since March 8, where he spent his holidays.
“When he returned, he showed no signs. But it was when he arrived home that the signs began to show and he alerted our services. Now he is being taken care ” says the Ministry of Health Official.
The first case of the virus is still in amitié Sino-Congolaise hospital where he and his wife have been quarantined. According to sources, his condition is stable and he is under the care of the doctors but the patient himself rejects the results from the laboratory of the National Institute of Biomedical Research (INRB) where his samples tested positive.
In a telephone interview with the patient declared to be suffering from the coronavirus, broadcast live on a Congolese television channel “Congo web”, the patient Faustin Fitika denies manifesting any symptoms of coronavirus except fever and rejects the allegations of the Congolese Minister of Health. He even claims that the fever he presented is rather the result of the preventive vaccine he received at the airport in France.
The DRC has never prepared itself adequately to face Coronavirus
Sources told TalkAfrica that patients are leaving the hospital where the two confirmed cases are quarantined for fear of being affected by Coronavirus. According to the same source, the Hospital was not prepared to receive Coronavirus patients and was chosen at the last minute by the ministry as the specialized Coronavirus center announced by the government is not ready yet.
Suspected people quarantined in a plot of land, where the first reported case of Coronavirus in the DRC was found, complain about the conditions under which this isolation is undergoing.
Jerry Bukolo, the public prosecutor of Lubumbashi, who was passing through Kinshasa, also found himself among those people deprived of exit. He and those who have been quarantined there say they respect this decision out of simple conscience.
“On Monday we are told you are in quarantine and you don’t go out. We were disinfected between Tuesday and Wednesday. They promised to give us masks but nothing was done. It’s only on Thursday around 1 pm that we saw the chief doctor of the Bandalungwa commune who came by. But I was very disappointed by the amateurism that characterizes this team. They took the temperature and asked routine questions. Today on Friday the one who came by didn’t have machines to take samples. He said his machine wasn’t working. We can’t leave people in quarantine and not meet the quarantine conditions ” The prosecutor Bukolo said indignantly.
DRC faces Ebola and Covid19 at the same time
According to Doctor Jean-Jacques Muyembe, technical secretary of the Multisectoral Committee for the Response to the Ebola Virus Epidemic, it will be very difficult to manage the two epidemics at the same time in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
“Our wish is not to have the two epidemics at the same time, it will be very difficult to manage. Our wish is to completely end Ebola. Will the Covid 19 outbreak take its place? We don’t want that either. Everything we have organized for Ebola will help us to avoid Covid19. These are the same strategies,” said Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe.
He also said that if the coronavirus reached the Democratic Republic of Congo, the mortality rate would be around 10%. This is due to the weakness of the national health system, the under-equipment of hospitals in the resuscitation sector and the lack of disinfectants for the protection of health workers.
Although the second case of coronavirus has been reported in Kinshasa, this alert tends to be trivialized not only by the population of the Capital City Kinshasa, where two confirmed cases have been confirmed but also in the rest of the country. Almost the entire Congolese population is practically indifferent to the prevention measures that emanate from the government, through the Ministry of Public Health.
On social networks, videos and messages are circulating claiming that the Minister of Health is a mercenary, in search of a lottery to win millions of US dollars promised by the World Health Organization for countries that will be affected by coronaviruses.
In order to contain the city of the Coronavirus outbreak, the Congolese government says it has “released part of the funds needed to ensure an effective response. This announcement was made in the Ministry of Health communiqué issued after a coordination meeting. However, the document does not specify either the size of the funds released or the size of the funds needed by the DRC to ensure an effective fight against this dangerous epidemic.
The disease is shaking up the world and continues to spread, prompting the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare on Wednesday 11 March that the epidemic can be considered a pandemic.
