The World Health Organization has evacuated 16 people working to contain the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo following a rebel attack near the area where they were staying, Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Saturday.
The decision marks another violence-related setback for the response to the outbreak, but Tedros said in an interview with STAT that he hoped containment operations could resume as normal soon.https://www.statnews.com/2018/11/17/...ck-attack-who/Earlier in the week eight peacekeepers and at least 12 Congolese soldiers died in an ambush on their joint operation aimed at routing out a stronghold of the rebel group Allied Democratic Forces near Beni. A number of rebels were captured in the exchange.
That event again prompted the U.N. to call for a halt to the violence in the region, suggesting attacks on the peacekeepers may be deemed war crimes under international law.
The Ebola outbreak response has been struggling because of the violence in the region and the distrust it fosters among people in the region who have lived with these conditions for years.