Thread by @LaurenWeberHP

Don't miss this amid the noise: The Democratic Republic of Congo is on a precipice as it awaits the results from a long-delayed presidential election that observers say was flawed. Helped by that chaos, an Ebola epidemic rages on. My latest and a thread:
huffingtonpost.com/entry/ebola-ou…

DRC is home to over 80 million people and 2/3rds the size of Western Europe. It's never had a peaceful democratic transition of power. Outgoing President Joseph Kabila delayed elections 2 years, and his handpicked successor has been sanctioned for cracking down on the opposition.

The country is also facing the second largest Ebola outbreak of ALL TIME. That's 613 cases and 371 deaths -- 371 people that weren't there for the Christmas and New Year holidays. It's now reached epidemic level, @CDCgov tells me. And sadly, it continues to grow.

This outbreak has been incredibly difficult to stop, with community resistance and rebel attacks constantly interrupting the response. But “the elections have been the third wave of destabilization,” @MorrisonCSIS told me. “I think [the responders] are hanging on by a thread.”

This week, DRC government cut the internet and SMS services -- which isn't helpful for responders trying to track down Ebola cases and contacts or stay in touch with staff -- nor a good sign, considering it's a tool of authoritarian governments. nytimes.com/2019/01/01/wor…

Before that, the government blamed Ebola for choosing not to hold an official vote in two of the opposition strongholds of Beni and Butembo -- which are also Ebola hot spots. In retaliation and anger, people attacked medical facilities. NGOs vital to the response relocated staff.

Fighting Ebola in a war zone is hard enough without the threat of electoral chaos. “If there’s anything we need, it’s stability,” @WHO Mike Ryan said. “It’s just important we stay the course and that we don’t lose confidence we can finish this.”

After all, the last time there was an extended interruption to the Ebola response ― this September in Beni ― the number of cases surged dramatically afterward. Ebola doesn't care about a nightmare democratic election process.
huffingtonpost.com/entry/ebola-ou…

A senior U.S. government official candidly told me: “Personally, we’re all incredibly concerned what we’re seeing now and what the potential impact is going to be over the next weeks for additional transmission of disease."

Amidst all that, there have also been ongoing critiques of the U.S. government for not allowing @CDCgov to deploy to the field. Ryan hailed the USG's support, but did add “Clearly we’d love to have CDC. It’s difficult to fight a war without your best allies in the field,”

The U.S. official told me: “I think many of us feel that if more people had been in the area earlier that we could potentially be in a better place today,” the anonymous U.S. official told @HuffPost . “But I don’t do security assessments; I do public health assessments.”

For @MorrisonCSIS it's more than that: “The bigger picture is that in the era of Brexit and the era of EU disarray and the era of Trump Washington, there’s not a lot of leadership at the major power level that’s focused on anything like this."

"@WHO is out there alone.”

“Unless the disease is checked, the risk of an explosive turn in the outbreak remains: spread to a larger city in the region, or to other countries, or to refugee camps in Sudan, or even to Kinshasa,” former Ebola czar @RonaldKlain told me. “That would be a catastrophe.”

The @WHO 's Ryan says they're staying and fighting with all they've got.
“There’s no other option. We stay and deliver and support the vulnerable people that are affected by this outbreak….

But we also stay and deliver as the world has to be protected from disease like this.” huffingtonpost.com/entry/ebola-ou…