Crowd Burns Ebola Treatment Center In Congo Amid Dispute Over Body

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

People set fire to an Ebola treatment center in a town at the heart of the outbreak in eastern Congo on May 21 after being stopped from retrieving the body of a local man, witnesses and police said.

“The police intervened to try to calm the situation, but unfortunately they were unsuccessful,” Alexis Burata, a local student who said he was in the area, told The Associated Press.

“The young people ended up setting fire to the center. That’s the situation.”

An Associated Press journalist saw people break into the center at Rwampara Hospital and set fire to objects inside, and also to what appeared to be the body of at least one suspected Ebola victim that was being stored there. Aid workers fled the treatment center in vehicles.

The crowd set fire to two tents fitted with eight beds run by a medical charity called The Alliance for International Medical Action (ALIMA), said Deputy Senior Commissioner Jean-Claude Mukendi, head of the public security department in Ituri Province.

Mukendi said the youths had not understood the protocols for burying a suspected Ebola victim.

“His family, friends, and other young people wanted to take his body home for a funeral even though the instructions from the authorities during this Ebola virus outbreak are clear,” Mukendi said. “All bodies must be buried according to the regulations.”

Mother Speaks Out

Family members of a man who died, soccer player Eli Munongo Wangu, wanted to bury their loved one themselves.

Munongo had played for several local teams and was a well-known figure in his neighborhood. He had been admitted to the hospital days earlier. A doctor said he was a suspected Ebola case, and the hospital had taken samples to run tests.

His mother told Reuters she believes her son had died of typhoid fever, not Ebola.

Authorities buried Munongo safely on Friday.

Calm Restored

Army and police reinforcements arrived to bring the situation under control, according to Mukendi.

Patrick Muyaya, Congo’s communication minister, said on X that “calm has been restored and care is continuing normally” at the center in Rwampara.

Muyaya and ALIMA said that six patients were being treated in the part of the facility set on fire.

They have all been located and are being cared for at a hospital. Security measures have been strengthened, Muyaya said.

Charred hospital beds stand in a smoldering Ebola treatment center in Rwampara, Congo, on May 21, 2026. Dirole Lotsima Dieudonne/AP Photo

Condemnation

Mukendi told reporters that “this is precisely a misunderstanding due to young people who do not understand the reality of this disease.”

ALIMA condemned in a May 21 statement what it called “the endangerment of human lives and the destruction of medical equipment essential for the safe care of patients, in the context of a particularly critical epidemic.”

It also warned against “the spread of incorrect or unconfirmed information on social media and the internet, which is likely to fuel fear, misinformation and mistrust towards health facilities and the teams involved in the Ebola response.”

Congo Health Minister Samuel Roger Kamba told a briefing on May 19 that the first known Ebola patient in the current outbreak was placed in a coffin after dying, but that the coffin was damaged.

Family members of the patient put the person in a different coffin, “thus spreading the infection,” Kamba said.

He said that the virus that causes Ebola is mainly spread through touching and improperly handling dead bodies.

“It was from this first case, from this funeral ceremony, that the virus exploded,” he said. “Everyone who was around, of course, was probably infected, and many developed the illness, and everyone thought it was the coffin that was causing it.”

Latest Figures

As of May 20, there have been 64 confirmed cases, 671 suspected cases, six confirmed deaths, and 160 suspected deaths linked to the outbreak, according to the Congolese government.

The World Health Organization declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern, and multiple other countries have barred some or all flights from Congo, including Uganda and the United States.

Congo’s government said that the cases and deaths have all been in Ituri province or neighboring North Kivu province.

Rebels holding South Kivu province, though, said Thursday that an Ebola case has been confirmed there. Local officials said there were two suspected cases, including one who died.