The US based Christian humanitarian group says it has 80 new treatment beds running in the province that, by its own count, holds nearly 90 percent of the country's confirmed cases, a figure that still needs independent verification from the WHO and the DRC health ministry.
Eighty new Ebola treatment beds are now operating in Democratic Republic of Congo's Ituri Province, a US-based Christian humanitarian organization said Sunday, as the country's latest outbreak remains heavily concentrated in the eastern region.
Samaritan's Purse, a Boone, N.C.-based evangelical relief group that has run emergency medical responses in past Ebola outbreaks, said it opened a 40-bed Ebola Treatment Center in Bunia on Sunday and a second 40-bed center in Nyankunde on Monday, co-located with an existing hospital, according to a company press release distributed by PR Newswire. The combined 80 beds are outfitted as the group's standard deployable field hospitals, with doctors and nurses providing hands-on care.
The press release claims Ituri Province accounts for nearly 90 percent of confirmed Ebola cases in the current outbreak, a figure not independently confirmed in this article. The World Health Organization's Africa regional office and the DRC Ministry of Health publish outbreak totals and provincial breakdowns; readers should treat the 90 percent share as the organization's own framing of the caseload until a public-health authority corroborates it.
The new capacity arrives as the country's latest outbreak continues. Past outbreaks in Ituri and North Kivu have drawn a range of responders, including secular medical NGOs and UN agencies, alongside faith-based groups; the press release does not name the other operators, the bed gap the new centers are meant to close, or how the 80 beds compare to provincial need.
President Franklin Graham, in remarks quoted in the release, framed the deployment in explicitly evangelical terms, asking supporters to pray for the patients and staff. The religious framing is a fact about the organization's identity and a line of legitimate reporting. Faith-based responders in past outbreaks have drawn scrutiny over proselytization, aid conditionality, and safeguarding, all topics the available source material does not address.
What to watch: WHO and DRC Ministry of Health case totals and provincial breakdowns for the current outbreak, the timing of the Nyankunde site's full opening, and any public statement from independent responders on whether 80 new beds in Ituri closes the capacity gap or simply narrows it.