[U X2] More Deeply Difficult Ebola News In Katwa, DRC: Doctors Without Borders Facility Burned, Yesterday...

UPDATED @ 5 PM EST: NPR offers some very solid late afternoon reporting -- on how the present Katwa hotspot is being driven (in part) by infections passed inside less sophisticated health care facilities -- ones that include traditional healing methods. These are very complicated sociological factors, leading to adverse epidemiological outcomes, here.

And, in an Tuesday 02.26.19 update, CIDRAP reports that the DRC ministry of health has confirmed one nurse perished in the blaze. Truly tragic. End, updated portion.

With well over 860 possible and confirmed cases, and over 540 dead. . . this is very discouraging -- on the heels of the renewed viral flare-up in Beni we mentioned just yesterday.

Katwa is where the bulk of the new cases have been seen, since January 2019 -- and it is very near the Ugandan border. Here's a bit, from Reuters, overnight:

. . . .Attackers set fire to an Ebola treatment center run by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo late on Sunday, forcing staff to evacuate patients, the charity said. . . . [All patients were safely evacuated to an undisclosed location.]

“As a result of the burning of the building, it is no longer possible to care for patients there,” MSF said on Twitter on Monday. None of the patients or staff were harmed, it added. . . .

We are certain that -- with time -- science and compassion will prevail. But there is likely to be significantly more. . . of the unspeakable dyings, first to come. And that profoundly saddens me -- as it is all a now rather preventable loss, of very-precious lives.

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