Ebola: 2 Patients Who Fled Quarantine Dead

Two out of the three patients with Ebola, who fled the hospital in DR Congo on Wednesday are dead, the doctors have confirmed. According to Doctors without Borders (MSF), two of them died after returning home.

On Wednesday, the Doctors Without Borders mission in the Congolese city of Mbandaka announced that three Ebola patients there had left a hospital isolation ward and reentered the general population.

One patient left Sunday, shortly before being discharged, and is still alive, according to the aid group. Two others left overnight Monday; one died outside of quarantine, and another was brought back to the hospital and died there.

“In all three cases, every effort was made by staff at the hospital to convince the patients — and their families — not to leave and to continue their treatment,” Brienne Prusak, a press officer for MSF, as Doctors Without Borders is frequently known, said in a statement.

The Democratic Republic of Congo announced on May 8 that there had been cases of the notorious haemorrhagic fever in a remote northwestern district called Bikoro.

Last Thursday, the first case was reported in a city — in Mbandaka, a transport hub located on the Congo River.

According to a World Health Organization (WHO) toll, twenty-seven people have died out of 58 cases.

Doctors, lacking a licensed drug to treat the contagious disease, use tried-and-trusted measures to contain its spread by quarantining patients and tracing those who have been in contact with them.

MSF, which supports the hospital in Wangata, said it was important to understand that “forced hospitalisation” would not work.

“The commitment of the patient” to being quarantined is fundamental,” it said, highlighting the need for public awareness on how to halt the outbreak.