Hundreds of police officers are being deployed to protect health workers and treatment centres amid a spiralling Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Over 1,200 suspected cases and 256 deaths linked to the rare Bundibugyo species of Ebola have now been reported in the DRC, along with seven confirmed cases in neighbouring Uganda.

A combination of conspiracy theories, mistrust and an already volatile security situation has fuelled a wave of violence that authorities say is hampering efforts to contain the virus, for which there are no approved vaccines or treatments.

The Congolese government is sending 300 additional officers to Ituri province in eastern DRC, where most cases have been reported, to curb a surge in attacks on healthcare facilities and aid workers, according to local media reports.

Several healthcare facilities have been attacked in recent days, including a treatment tent run by the charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) that was caring for Ebola patients before being set on fire in the gold-mining town of Mongbwalu, one of the hardest-hit areas of the outbreak.

At least 18 infected patients reportedly fled the facility during the attack.

Another treatment centre in the nearby town of Rwampara was burned last Thursday after relatives were prevented from retrieving the body of a local man who succumbed to the virus.

The bodies of Ebola victims are highly infectious, and unsafe burial practices – including washing, touching or kissing the deceased – are amongst the disease’s main drivers of transmission.

Ituri has been riven by ethnic strife for decades, and insecurity means state services are largely absent from rural areas.

The region has long been preyed on by the Cooperative for the Development of Congo (CODECO) – a loose coalition of predominantly Lendu militias – and the Convention for the Popular Revolution (CRP), a rebel movement formed under Thomas Lubanga, a Ugandan convicted as a war criminal by the International Criminal Court.

Clashes between the two have waxed and waned over the decades, but at their worst have seen tens of thousands killed and hundreds of thousands flee their homes.

Ladd Serwat, senior Africa analyst at Acled, the conflict monitoring group, said: “While both groups claim to defend local communities, armed actors in Ituri have historically complicated humanitarian access, particularly where populations are perceived as aligned with rival ethnic communities.”

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a statement on Wednesday: “Eastern DRC now faces a catastrophic collision of disease and conflict, with the Ebola outbreak in Ituri province outpacing the response.

“Stopping this Ebola transmission depends entirely on humanitarian access.”

He added the fighting was “driving mass displacement, pushing exposed contacts into overcrowded camps and severing critical containment corridors.”

The conflict means that health workers are struggling to trace those they believe have been exposed to the virus.

As of last week, only seven per cent of the 1,261 people identified as contacts of suspected Ebola patients had been found and followed up, WHO coordinators said in a meeting.

The number of contacts at risk of contracting the disease has now surged to 2,000, according to the WHO.

Several countries have introduced border restrictions in light of the outbreak.

Uganda on Wednesday closed its border with the DRC with immediate effect. Travel across the border will be authorised only in emergency cases, such as for those involved in the outbreak response, according to the local authorities.

It came after Canada announced it will ban residents from the DRC, Uganda, and South Sudan from entering for the next 90 days, starting on Wednesday.

The Bahamas will also ban travellers from the three Central African countries for the next 30 days.

Last week, Washington banned non-US citizens who had travelled to the DRC, Uganda or South Sudan in recent weeks from entering the US.

The travel restrictions have been criticised by some regional health authorities.

Responding to the US travel ban, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) last week said “generalised travel restrictions and border closures are not the solution to outbreaks”.

The Trump administration is reportedly set to deploy US public health officers to Kenya to operate a quarantine and treatment facility for Americans exposed to the virus in the region, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Earlier this month, the administration flew a symptomatic American doctor working in the DRC to a hospital in Germany, and transported six other US citizens for monitoring in Germany and the Czech Republic.

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