NORTH KIVU PROVINCE — Virunga National Park has initiated an emergency operation to screen for and contain Ebola in North Kivu Province. The park is constructing five specialized facilities and stationing park rangers at transit checkpoints to screen travelers for Ebola symptoms.
The park's management is funding the construction of these five screening facilities on transit routes that exit the affected zone. Emmanuel de Merode, director of Virunga National Park, said, "The situation we're living through now is certainly the worst we've experienced in the past 30 years." Each facility will include a diagnosis room, an analysis room, staff computer equipment, internet infrastructure, and a dedicated isolation unit. Construction costs for each facility are $44,000.
De Merode said, "These are quite, quite complex constructions. They're not just barriers on the road. There are at least six buildings that go with it." He added that the national park serves as a natural firewall, with nearly 100% screening coverage at points where roads cross rivers. Each facility will employ 30 personnel, with 20 assigned to security roles.
Virunga National Park contains several hundred mountain gorillas, representing approximately one-third of the global population, and they are highly susceptible to contracting the Ebola virus. The park covers approximately 2 million acres and extends over 180 miles from north to south along the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The region experienced an Ebola outbreak from 2018 to 2020, and the currently circulating strain does not have an available vaccine.
De Merode said that the health services in Congo are critically under-resourced to handle this epidemic, and many health workers have contracted the disease and died. Health authorities serving 11 million residents in North Kivu Province initially had access to only two body bags for viral hemorrhagic fever victims. The park administration procured 100 body bags within 48 hours for distribution to regional health workers.
No independent assessment was available for this report.