The DRC has already faced Ebola twice. How can we cope with coronavirus?

While the death toll appears to be low, cemeteries are running out of space. Never have I seen such a number of funerals

Last week, from my home in Goma, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, I talked to members of the Welsh parliament about the desperate plight of people facing coronavirus.

We have already suffered two Ebola epidemics and we are still facing the effects of that terrible illness, so I just don’t know how we’ll cope with another disease outbreak. We are the fifth most fragile state in the world, one of the least able to respond to such demands on our beleaguered health services.

When I attended this special briefing, the official figure for Covid-19 confirmed cases in DRC was around 8,000 – and it’s risen by 400 since – but there is such limited testing this is only a small part of the story.

The DRC is a country as big as western Europe with a population of 84m, but there are only three testing locations. Recently, the head of our coronavirus taskforce said that currently, testing could only reveal around 10 to 15 per cent of reality. What I am seeing on the ground is contradictory to the official figures.

While the death toll appears to be low, cemeteries are running out of space. Never have I seen such a number of funerals. When I move around the city, doing humanitarian work, I hear of so many people who have lost their lives.

Recently I visited a camp for internally displaced people – for people forced from their homes by conflict. There are 5.7m in temporary shelter like this in the DRC.

When I visited, I had tears in my eyes. Families had arrived. They’d fled on foot. Some were wounded, including children and pregnant women. They’d fled violence for a home made out of plastic sheeting. They don’t have the luxury of social distancing.

The long walk had induced the labour of three of the women. What brought a tear to my eye was that I knew that we didn’t have the capacity or resources to transfer them to a hospital or a proper medical facility. They are obliged to rely on traditional methods of health care.

In the DRC, we have 0.1 doctors per 1,000 people. That compares with almost 3 per 1,000 in the UK.

In the UK, people have been able to wash their hands to help protect themselves from Covd-19. But something as basic as clean water is a challenge. Access to this precious resource is limited. Only 52 per cent of the population has access to a protected water source and only 4.4 per cent have basic hygiene – soap and water – in their homes.

Also, many people have to go out every day to earn their daily bread. When we speak to people, they feel like we are saying that they can either die of hunger or coronavirus.

In the DRC, the population is young because people don’t get old. They die young.

Even though people are younger, they still face diseases like malaria and typhoid. Age aside, their immunity is affected due to poverty and hardship and this makes them more vulnerable. The vast majority of our population – 80 per cent – are extremely poor.

Young people have the energy to help us, but they may be infected and they need the right information and resources first. We have been trying to scale up our water projects, but we need things like masks and soap, outside of what the community can provide.

On the ground, we have an increasing number of volunteers ready to help. But they need resources.

We are worried this situation will quickly escalate, and that the worst is yet to come.

Hebdavi Muhindo is Tearfund’s country director for the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Tearfund is one of 14 leading UK aid charities who are members of the Disasters Emergency Committee. To donate to the DEC’s coronavirus appeal, go to www.dec.org.uk