Ebola in the DRC – Clashes in the Sudan – Africa Headlines

Head­line news about the Ebo­la epi­dem­ic from Aljazeera news, DW, and Africanews.com

What is been described as a long-sim­mer­ing Ebo­la epi­dem­ic in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of Con­go (DRC) is mak­ing Africa head­line news after the dis­cov­ery of cas­es of the dis­ease at the bor­der of the DRC and Uganda.

The Ebo­la cri­sis in the DRC which began last August accord­ing to the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion (WHO) has sick­ened many and killed more than 600 Con­golese, accord­ing to the WHO.

Accord­ing to the Doc­tors With­out Bor­ders orga­ni­za­tion, which placed a red alert on its web­site, “ The lat­est Ebo­la epi­dem­ic is the worst ever doc­u­ment­ed in Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of Con­go (DRC)—and the sec­ond-largest Ebo­la out­break record­ed any­where. Efforts to stop the spread of the dis­ease are chal­lenged by the real­i­ties of fight­ing an epi­dem­ic in a con­flict zone.”

With the dis­ease spread­ing across bor­ders in East Africa, the news trig­gered a flood of sto­ries that depict­ed the alarm and seri­ous­ness with which human­i­tar­i­an orga­ni­za­tions and gov­ern­ments are treat­ing the issue.

On June 13 — Axios, an Amer­i­can news web­site, car­ried the head­line: Ebo­la spreads, as world awak­ens. The head­line was fol­lowed by charts show­ing the increas­ing verac­i­ty of the lat­est cri­sis. Axios pro­vid­ed a time­line of the events, from August 2018 until June 5.

Writer Andrew Free­man not­ed: “Details: This Ebo­la out­break is already the sec­ond-largest on record, and even the deploy­ment of a suc­cess­ful vac­cine has proven insuf­fi­cient at arrest­ing its spread. A key rea­son for this is the chal­leng­ing secu­ri­ty envi­ron­ment in which respon­ders are operating.”

On June 13, the news from Ars Tech­ni­cal, a tech­ni­cal web­site, and a sub­sidiary of Conde Nast, focused on the sub­ject: Ebo­la spreads in Uganda—2 deaths, 27 in contact—as WHO calls emer­gency meet­ing.

Mean­while, CBS News report­ed on the mat­ter June 14.  The news orga­ni­za­tion echoed state­ments from the WHO which said the mat­ter was still not an emergency.

On June 16 CNN pub­lished a sto­ry about a Scot­tish nurse, Pauline Cafer­key, a vic­tim of the Ebo­la virus in 2014, who gave birth to twins on June 11.

The year 2014 was the height of the Ebo­la dis­ease which impact­ed three coun­tries in West Africa, Liberia, Guinea, and Sier­ra Leone, and which caused an inter­na­tion­al scare and drained the health resources of the affect­ed countries.

Accord­ing to writer Beth Mole of Ars Tech­ni­ca, “Local and inter­na­tion­al health offi­cials are scram­bling to smoth­er a flare-up of Ebo­la in Ugan­da, which spread this week from a mas­sive, months-long out­break in the neigh­bor­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of the Con­go. The out­break has sick­ened 2,084 and killed 1,405 since last August.”

Mean­while, the WHO issued a state­ment on June 14 express­ing deep con­cern about the spread of the dis­ease despite efforts to quell it.

In all these sto­ries the one thing was clear – the secu­ri­ty envi­ron­ment around the DRC and the East Africa region was a con­cern. While efforts are under­way to deal with the dis­ease, con­flict in the region may make this task even more chal­leng­ing for orga­ni­za­tions and gov­ern­ments involved.

Weeks after the over­throw of Bashir – The Civil­ian Pop­u­la­tion Strug­gles to Have a Voice 

 The fire from the Sudanese Arab Spring May have had its fuel burnt out after weeks in which the civil­ian pop­u­la­tion that engi­neered the over­throw of the long-time Sudanese mil­i­tary leader, Omar al — Bashir, strug­gled to have its voice heard.

The New York Times head­line on this sub­ject, Sudan Oust­ed a Bru­tal Dic­ta­tor. His Suc­ces­sor Was His Enforcer, echoes the back­lash fol­low­ing weeks in which civil­ian voic­es have been silenced, with some killed, oth­ers wound­ed, as cit­i­zens tried to wres­tle con­trol of the coun­try from the hands of the military.

Lt. Gen. Mohamed Ham­dan, Bashir’s suc­ces­sor, the sto­ry goes on, is the one who now sits atop the pin­na­cle of pow­er and mak­ing deci­sions for the Sudanese nation. Those deci­sions have result­ed in more protests and more deaths fol­low­ing the ouster of Bashir on April 11.

Bloomberg News echoes a sim­i­lar head­line June 10 — Why Sudan’s Pain Endures After a Bru­tal Leader’s Ouster – with writer Mohammed Alamin say­ing, “A crack­down on June 3 left more than 100 pro­test­ers dead after talks between the mil­i­tary and oppo­si­tion on form­ing a civil­ian gov­ern­ment stalled. Now tar­get­ed with arrest or worse by a pow­er­ful mili­tia, Sudan’s fledg­ling pro-democ­ra­cy move­ment risks being snuffed out.”

Alamin nar­rates how all this start­ed: “The coup against Bashir on April 11 fol­lowed four months of nation­wide protests over soar­ing prices for food, med­i­cine, fuel, and trans­porta­tion in which scores of peo­ple died. When the 75-year-old ruler, who was indict­ed by the Inter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court for alleged war crimes and geno­cide in the west­ern region of Dar­fur, refused to step down, some of his erst­while allies from the mil­i­tary and secu­ri­ty forces pushed him out.”

Where all this is head­ed is not clear, but Alamin says, “The U.S., which had appeared to take a back seat, has con­demned the assault on pro­test­ers. The pre­mier of neigh­bor­ing Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed, vis­it­ed June 7 in an attempt to bro­ker a solution.”