Extracts below from a BBC news item today. Full text: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c79yj09nd4qo
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9 July 2026
"They grabbed me from behind and started punching me, hitting me with spades and machetes," says Daniel Uyirwoth Welo, one of four Red Cross volunteers injured when a crowd tried to open a coffin carrying someone who had died from Ebola.
The 27-year-old and his colleagues were attempting to carry out a safe burial at a cemetery in Bunia, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, last month when they were attacked. The assault was triggered by rumours - circulating locally and online - that the coffin was empty.
Some in the crowd said, "No Ebola doesn't exist," Welo told BBC Verify, adding that others believed the Red Cross team was there only "to get money"...
False claims circulating in affected areas include allegations that Ebola doesn't exist, that health workers are deliberately infecting people or harvesting their organs, and that the Ebola response is a money-making scheme...
Most recently, on 1 July, people set fire to an Ebola treatment centre in Bafwabango, Ituri province, the epicentre of the outbreak. Local media reported that a police officer was killed following clashes over the body of a person suspected to have died from the virus...
Dr Aimé Mbonda Noula of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said some families had fled their homes when a relative died from Ebola, abandoning the body rather than notifying authorities because they feared being taken into quarantine. "Most of the people in [these] communities think that these treatment centres are places where, when you go, you die," he said. "So, you usually run away from these places and run away from the health workers"...
"Ebola misinformation is Ebola's greatest ally," Dr Wessam Mankoula from the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention told the BBC. "False rumours delay care for people who need help and fuel attacks on health workers and health facilities, disrupting outbreak control and giving the virus more opportunities to spread."...
"Mistrust is the real battleground," WHO chief, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, wrote on social media, external in June. "Win trust, and we win this."
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HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org