Reuters Dozens of feverish patients lay on thin mattresses on the floor of a makeshift mpox isolation ward in east Democratic Republic of Congo, as overstretched hospital workers grappled with drug shortages and lack of space to accommodate the influx.
Congo is the epicentre of an mpox outbreak that the World Health Organization declared to be a global public health emergency last month.
Vaccines are set to arrive within days to fight the new strain of the virus, while Congo’s President Felix Tshisekedi has allowed a first $10 million disbursement to fight the outbreak. But at the hospital complex in the town of Kavumu, where 900 symptomatic patients have been taken in over the past three months, health workers are desperate for support.
“We run out of medicine every day,” said head doctor Musole Mulamba Muva.
“There are many challenges we struggle to overcome with our local means,” he said, noting that donations from international organisations rapidly dwindled.
Last week there were 135 patients in the mpox ward, children and adults combined, crammed between three large plastic tents pitched into damp earth without a floor cover.