Ebola healthcare workers protest in DR Congo

Yaounde, Cameroon

Ebola healthcare providers in the Democratic Republic of Congo have embarked on a one-day strike, local media reported on Friday.

The strike paralyzed the care activities for Ebola patients for a few hours in the Ebola Treatment Center in Mbandaka, the capital city of the northwestern Equateur province, as the workers asked for the payment of their allowances.

The health authorities in the city convinced them to return to work while waiting for a permanent solution from authorities in the country's capital Kinshasa, according to UN-run Radio Okapi.

So far there are 77 cases, with 73 confirmed and four probable, as well as 33 deaths, and 29 recoveries from the 11th Ebola virus outbreak in Mbandaka, the WHO African Region tweeted on Friday.

The WHO had also expressed concern over the 11th Ebola outbreak, and that it deployed over 70 experts in the DRC to help the country fight the outbreak.

The UN health agency and the DRC government in June declared the country was free from the 10th outbreak.

Starting in North Kivu on Aug. 1, 2018, the epidemic was the second-largest outbreak in the world, and particularly challenging as it took place in an active conflict zone. There were 3,470 cases, 2,287 deaths, and 1,171 survivors, according to the WHO.

Ebola, a tropical fever that first appeared in 1976 in Sudan and the DRC, is transmitted to humans from wild animals.

The disease caused a global alarm in 2014, when the world's worst outbreak began in West Africa, killing more than 11,300 people, and infecting an estimated 28,600 as it swept through Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone.