Vanny Birungi, a Red Cross volunteer, speaks to people during a public sensitisation campaign amid the Ebola outbreak in Bunia, Congo, Monday, May 25, 2026. (AP Photo\/Moses Sawasawa)<\/small><\/p>\n
2026-05-25T16:59:46Z<\/p>\n
BUNIA, Congo (AP) \u2014 Every time Vanny Birungi, a volunteer with the Red Cross in eastern Congo, goes out to raise awareness about the latest Ebola outbreak<\/a><\/span> as suspected cases near 1,000, she faces a double threat<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n One is the rare Bundibugyo type<\/a><\/span> of Ebola, with no vaccine or treatment. The other is the anger and suspicion of residents who have pelted her with stones and verbal abuse in Bunia, a city at the heart of the outbreak.<\/p>\n \u201cWe continue to tell them that the disease is out there. Some accept, and others don\u2019t,\u201d Birungi told The Associated Press on Monday as she and colleagues spoke with groups of people in a working-class neighborhood under the scorching sun.<\/p>\n Aid workers are especially at risk in this volatile region where residents, like Birungi, have long been under threat of armed groups that have killed thousands of people and displaced many more in recent years.<\/p>\n Trust is hard to find among the traumatized population that is wary of outsiders, even those trying desperately to contain the rapidly spreading outbreak that experts say was discovered weeks late<\/a><\/span>. Surveillance for such diseases has been weakened by U.S. and other aid cuts.<\/p>\n \u201cThese people should stop bothering us. They just want to get rich. Let\u2019s not forget that Ebola is a white man\u2019s invention,\u201d declared Pierre Basola, a 56-year-old resident of Bunia, who added: \u201cStop talking to me anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n Three times in the past week, healthcare facilities have been attacked. On Sunday, angry young men stormed a hospital<\/a><\/span> treating Ebola patients, forcing medical staff to evacuate them as gunfire rang out.<\/p>\n On Saturday, a group of residents set fire to a tent for suspected and confirmed Ebola cases run by Doctors Without Borders in Mongbwalu, and more than a dozen people suspected to have the virus fled. On Thursday, a center in Rwampara was burned after relatives were barred from retrieving the body of a man suspected to have Ebola.<\/p>\nCases are nearing 1,000 but health centers are burned<\/h2>\n