DRC predicament between Mpox and M23 insurgency

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is between a rock and a hard place. The country has to deal with an insurgency in its east where a virus is rapidly spreading outside of the country’s borders.

As the World Health Organization declares the new Mpox strain found in the DRC a global emergency, infighting worsens in the country’s east with 16 villages killed between pro-government fighters and M23 rebels.

The DRC, the UN and Western countries accuse Rwanda of supporting rebel groups, including M23, in a bid to control the region’s vast mineral resources, an allegation Kigali denies.

The deaths were reported in the Rutshuru territory, North Kivu province where the new strain of Mpox outbreak was located.

DRC has reported some 16,000 Mpox cases with South Kivu alone reporting an average 350 cases daily, according to local media. However, the real scale of contagion is far greater than officially reported figures.

The infighting complicated efforts to monitor and counter the spread of the virus amid a large number of displaced persons transmitting the virus.

There are at least 7.3 million displaced persons in the DRC, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Medics were dissuaded from treating patients which further contributed to the outbreak of the virus to other parts of DRC and neighboring states.

In a Goma hospital in eastern DRC, hospitals are already crumbling with medics unable to treat the high number of infected people.