DR Congo confirmed a record number of Ebola cases in one day on Wednesday, as stigma continues to surround survivors.
Dozens of Congolese Ebola survivors are dispelling rumours and caring for patients and lone children in the world’s second-deadliest outbreak, health workers said on Thursday.
The virus is spreading fast in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), with 713 confirmed and probable cases and 439 deaths.
It is surpassed only by the 2014-2016 outbreak in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, in which more than 11,000 people died.
Nearly 250 patients in the DRC have recovered since the outbreak began in July.
Research has shown that the disease gives survivors immunity.
“I like this work very much,” said Lydie Besolo, an 18-year-old in the town of Beni who survived Ebola and now spends her afternoons after school working as a nurse in a health centre run by medical charity Doctors Without Borders (known by their French acronym, MSF).
“I tell (the patients) my story. It helps them,” she said, adding that she hopes to be a doctor someday.
